The Cursed
by That Emperor
Summary: Fumika Kodama didn't believe in ghosts. However, when she accidentally transports herself back in time and awakens the demon of the cursed woods, binding her soul to his bloodthirsty blade, she discovers that ghosts are as real as they are dangerous. Now she must try to free herself from the blade's curse or become its new undead consort...Muramasa(Snee)/teen!Fumika(Katie Forester)
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: Really AU story with teen!Fumi. Nowhere close to my best work, but it's dreadfully fun to write. I have many of the chapters already drafted in full, so I will try and update it every week or two provided I don't have any commissions to work on. It should also be noted that this mainly follows the game canon/lifts story elements from the game. All major character names are their Japanese variants. To clean up any confusion:_

 _Muramasa = Snee  
Fumika Kodama = Katie Forester  
Kagero = Blandon  
Hyakki-hime = Damona  
Keita Amano = Nate Adams  
Masamune = Sheen_

 **PART I: DON'T FEAR THE REAPER**

Chapter I: Awakening

The staccato ringing of the phone spooked Fumika Kodama into dropping her book. She knew she should have sat in her bedroom rather than the living room. She considered ignoring the shrill ringing, silently punishing the caller for interrupting her, but for all she knew it was her mother, and she didn't want to risk getting in trouble.

"Hello?" she said into the receiver, her tone controlled and tight despite her best efforts to avoid sounding annoyed.

"Hi, Fumi." It was her friend Keita. She had met him about five years ago when they were both in the fifth grade, and since then he had been elevated from "schoolyard pal" to "family friend" status. "I think you know why I'm calling."

She sighed, this time making sure he was fully aware of how inconveniencing she found him. "No, I didn't forget. And, no, I haven't found your silly Moximus Mask comics yet."

Technically they weren't really Keita's comics – they were her grandfather's. Keita had an intense interest in the comics largely because his own grandfather had once collected the exact same books. The ones Fumi owned happened to be the very first volumes, which were the only ones lacking from Keita's grandfather's collection. Fumi didn't understand the attraction Keita felt towards the story of Moximus Mask, something he unabashedly adored, but she did appreciate the history behind the old cartoons. She just didn't want to appreciate them at that exact moment.

"Please can you bring them over today?" He stretched the word 'please' out as if he were a little kid begging his mother for candy. "I know you're not doing anything today."

"I was reading," she said flatly.

"Same thing. You can read anytime, but you only have so much summer vacation left to hang out with your friends. C'mon, Kuma and Kanchi are coming over too."

A part of her wanted to argue with him, but another part of her admitted he had a point. When school started she could always read in between classes, but with all the homework her teachers intended to shovel down their students' throats, none of them would have much time to spend with each other outside of weekends. That, and her parents would be scrutinizing Fumi's every move, hounding her until they were certain she was writing, reading, and testing to the utmost peak of her abilities. Even then, she often felt they wanted her to perform into the realm of the humanly impossible. Suddenly the desire to spend time with her friends eclipsed her desire to read.

"Alright, you win." She set the book down on the coffee table in front of the sofa. "I'll be over in a bit. I just have to go into the attic and find them."

"Alright! See you then!" Click.

xxx

The dust was everywhere in the attic like newly fallen snow, untouched for years save for the tiny footprints of mice and insects tracing helter-skelter trails along the brittle cardboard boxes. Fumika didn't really want to root around in her parents' filthy attic for a bunch of old comic books, but after how Keita had begged to see her cartoon family heirlooms, she felt rude to arrive at his house with no comics to show. It wasn't like anyone in her household was enjoying them. When her parents returned from work Fumi decided she'd ask her mom if she could give the comics to Keita. They'd be safe with him, and she knew he'd cherish them. The first trick, however, would be to find them.

Tiny beams of light filtered through the single, shuttered window to the attic, illuminating the clouds of dust that rose as Fumi moved about. The dirty, heavy air stank of dried must and baked cardboard. Fumi couldn't wait to get out. Thankfully, she knew she wouldn't have to hang around the dark and cramped space for long. Her parents were careful about organization, having labeled the contents of each box before sending them up into storage, and very few possessed her grandfather's name. Fumi crawled over to the first box she saw with "GRANDPA'S STUFF" scrawled upon its side in black magic marker and opened it up, coughing violently when she was greeted with a grey billow of dust that stung her throat and lungs. She tilted the beam of her flashlight into the box, illuminating a messy tangle of jewelry seated upon a stack of old family photos featuring her grandfather and grandmother long before they died. She didn't think the old Moximous Mask comics would be under the photos, but she began to carefully remove the jewelry and framed memories just in case they were.

When she reached the warmth-dried bottom of the box, she found not a single issue of Moximous Mask. She did, however, find an old pocket watch.

At a glance the clockwork device appeared unremarkable in the shadows, but when the beam of her flashlight sliced into its smooth face, it revealed an open dial that provided a window to the watch's elaborate network of guts and gears. A coiling forest of vines and flowers traversed its metal backside, a miniature garden carved from silver. She tried to wind it, but the tiny knob crunched once before refusing to budge. Though it didn't work, it was attractive to her in the same way the comics were attractive to Keita; it bore that distinct historical air to it that all things once loved carried with regal pride. It came attached to a tarnished chain that was the perfect length for a necklace. Eager to show the bauble to her friends, Fumi looped it around her neck and tucked it into her shirt for safe keeping before moving on to the next box.

She found the four comic issues in the second box, each neatly packed into a protective cellophane sleeve. Knowing that Keita would slaughter her if she dare dented the corners, she lifted each issue from the box with careful precision, gently resting them on the dusty wooden beams that served as the attic's floor.

Once all four issues were safely excavated from their cardboard tomb, she retreated down the wooden stairs, closing the trap door to the attic behind her. The crisp, clean air rushed into her lungs. Even the stifling Japanese summer was preferable to the heavy heat in the attic.

Fumi began to head towards the stairwell leading back downstairs but halted in fright when she saw her reflection in the hallway mirror. Blackened cobwebs clung to her chestnut brown hair like a shroud. She could never show up at Keita's looking like she just crawled out of a crypt. He'd never let her escape the heckling, and if Kuma and Kanchi were there, the jokes would be even worse

A quick glance at the wall clock told her she was more than two hours early for Keita's. He only lived a few blocks over, so that was more than enough time to take a shower and change.

xxx

She could have sworn the antique store had been a vacant lot the night before.

Fumi found herself abruptly breaking on her bike when the store's dark facade loomed into her sight. The title "The Memory Store" was displayed on its storefront, and a neon sign reading "OPEN. WE REPAIR WATCHES" flashed brightly in its window.

Fumi fished the dead pocket watch out of her jeans, glancing at it, and then at the store. No matter how good the clocksmith inside was, he could never mend it before she needed to meet with Keita. Still, perhaps the man could give her a quote. It wasn't like she lacked time to kill; if she showed up for Keita's now she'd still be at least half an hour early.

A tiny bell jingled when Fumi opened the door to the shop. Shadows hung everywhere inside, filling the corners with an oppressive darkness. The sole source of illumination was a smattering of clocks, their faces glowing with various colored lights. Some displayed old Roman numerals Fumi could barely read, while others appeared so modern they could have been built yesterday. The silence in the shop pressed upon Fumi like a weight.

"Hello?" Fumi opened the door wider, allowing a gust of warm air to swirl into the air conditioned interior. "Is there anyone here? I'm looking to repair a watch – AH!"

She stepped in, and the door behind her suctioned shut, startling her as its bell crashed and chimed. The hairs along her neck rose to attention. The wind, she told herself, it had to be the wind.

Fumi stepped forward into the murky darkness, navigating her way through the shadows with the tip of a sneaker. "Hey, the sign says open. You should probably turn it off if you're not around."

More clocks, racks of old clothes, antique toys, and other shapeless nick knacks materialized as Fumi's eyes adjusted to the dimness. She slowly walked over to the counter, a vast glass container that encased countless types of pocket watches. Some worked, tick, tick, ticking away so loudly that if she concentrated she could hear them, while others were as dead as the one safely protected within the confines of her shirt. She hoped that her watch was the sort whose clockwork heart could be resurrected, provided the owner ever made his appearance.

Fumi squinted her brown eyes towards an old blue curtain behind the counter, concealing a doorway that led to the back room. "Are you in there, Mr. Owner?"

No answer.

Perhaps he was on his lunch break and had forgotten to turn the light off. She didn't want to risk looking like a thief, but Fumi deeply desired to browse about the shop, hoping that maybe she could find some other antique comics to showcase to her friends. A glance at her phone told her she wouldn't be late to Keita's if she made it quick. Unfortunately, she soon discovered nothing in the shop really thrilled her. The books were too archaic, the toys had seen too many playtimes, and the clothing felt more thrifty than antique.

The one thing that managed to draw her in was a large wall clock whose dial was illuminated in eerie blue lights that appeared to be neither electric nor neon gas. Glow in the dark, perhaps? Fumi could not tell. She just wanted to have it, to feel its face beneath the touch of her pale fingers…

"Hey, hey you!" The shopkeeper, a middle-aged man in a blue beanie, burst out from behind the curtains. "Don't touch the merchandise, if you have a question, ask me and I'll –"

Fumi's ears were deaf to his warnings. She was deaf to the whole world; to Keita, to the dark atmosphere of the shop, to the ticking of the clocks all around her, the ticking that accelerated as if the clocks were a collective being, a being gently urging the girl to place her hand against that one spellbinding face. Yes, yes, they seemed to say as one, touch it, touch it, feel its power beneath your fingertips, let it take you places you would never dream existed...

Her fingers brushed its smooth glass face, causing it to shatter. The cracks leaped off the clock, cleaving a rift through the air that stretched and widened by the second, its depths a kaleidoscopic maw of shifting color. For a moment Fumi woke from her trance, her brown eyes opening wide. "W-What?" She glanced over at the shopkeeper, her pleasing gaze begging for rescue.

His eyes, rimmed with a sleepy shadow of purple, goggled as tendrils bust from the rift, wrapping their glowing lengths around Fumi's wrists and ankles, yanking her towards the yawning chasm. He seemed as mortified as she was. "I told you," he said as she was pulled into the flashing show of light, "not to touch the merchandise!"

Vertigo fell over her like a colossal wave, the sensation grabbing onto her stomach and ripping at her intestines until she screamed. This couldn't be real, she had to be dreaming; no pain could be this intense, no moment this surreal. The world flashed around her in a tunnel of colors, blinding her to everything but the agony threatening to rip her body asunder. She didn't want to die this way, being torn apart like paper all because she touched a clock. She always saw it differently growing up; that she would die an old woman, her lights snuffing themselves out as she slept. This wasn't how she ever saw it at all. She always saw things firmly rooted in the realm of reality.

Fumi screamed, the agony ripping the sound from her throat. And then, just as suddenly as it began, the pain ceased.

Black flecks of light danced beneath closed eyelids. Fumi feared opening them, feared what she would see, but she could hear the loud drone of cicadas singing their summer song, and the monotonous familiarity of their insectoid chorus lulled her into comfort. She slowly opened her eyes, crescents of light filling her vision with long blades of green grass and warm summer sunlight.

Fumi sighed, her bones creaking as she sat up. Gnats danced in the air, their bodies like gold jewels as they flitted through the rays of light cascading downward through the trees. She looked around in stunned silence, realizing she had fallen into a clearing in the middle of the woods. It was an odd place, nearly a perfect circle of tall grass in which no trees larger than a sapling managed to grow. The surrounding forest was so thick that the trees blotted out the sun, shadows dancing and swaying beneath their vast canopy. The clearing was the only place where sunlight was allowed to reach the forest floor.

"Where the heck am I?" Fumi wanted to believe this was all just a dream, but the sharp prickle of grass against her bare legs felt too real. She had to find her way home, somehow.

Fumi stood, grabbing onto a nearby sapling for leverage. "And to think all I wanted to do was show Keita some stupid comic books." She was going to kill him once she got out of here, provided she even decided to inform him of her escapade. Even someone with his active imagination would never believe her.

Fumi felt something painful trace a line down her palm. She cursed under her breath and looked at her hand. A bright red gash, blood quickly welling out of the wound, slashed down her hand from the base of her thumb to the heel of her palm.

She wiped it on her shorts, wincing as the rough denim aggravated the irritation. "This is just my day. The hell did I even cut myself on?"

Fumi looked towards the sapling, expecting to see an insect or the sharp edge of a broken twig. Instead she saw that the sapling wasn't a sapling at all; it was a battered sword jutting from a crack in a rock. Its edge was tarnished and jagged, chunks of metal weathered away by the elements, but still sharp enough to cut. Steel took ages to tarnish. She couldn't even imagine how old it was.

Fresh blood from Fumi's cut was smeared in a red streak down the edge of the blade. The metal seemed to glow a ghostly turquoise where the blood had kissed it, an illusion caused by the wavering shadows and blade's tarnished edge. But then the blue light began to grow, traversing the length of the weapon, kissing color into its dirty, blackened metal, and Fumi realized with a mounting sense of dread that this was no illusion; it was something as real and sinister as her descent into this world. Cracks spidered along the face of the stone, chips of grey rock falling into the grass as the light intensified, becoming so bright Fumi was forced to avert her eyes.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up!" Fumi clenched her eyes and tugged at her hair, yanking it out of its formerly neat ponytail by the handful. This was too weird, far too weird. She just wanted to wake up from this nightmare and go home.

"Ah…Finally…" The voice was deep and scratchy, clearly belonging to a creature who hadn't said a word for nigh on a millennium and was at long last giving his vocal chords a stretch.

Fumi opened her eyes at the sound of the voice, finding rock and sword gone, replaced by a strange man whose face was obscured by an unusually large sandogasa, its rim decorated in tags painted with mysterious runes that looked nothing like any characters in Fumi's lexicon. A blue flame flickered atop his hat, and the torn remains of a purple hakama, cloak, and scarf flowed about him in disheveled layers. An arm, bandaged to the elbow in gauze, gripped the once-imprisoned blade whose entire length now glowed an ominous blue.

"Hey, uh, do you think you could tell me how to get out of here?" The hesitancy in her own voice made Fumi cringe. What a stupid question to even ask.

The hairs on the back of Fumi's neck tingled and rose; the sinking feeling in her stomach told her something was deeply amiss. Run, run, every animal instinct commanded, yet she found herself spellbound into stillness by this wraith of a man who was equally as compelling as he was terrifying.

The man abruptly jerked his head upward, locking eyes with Fumi. His eyes were gold with slitted pupils like a cat's, his flesh a shadowy shade of black. He had no visible nose, and his cruelly frowning lips were the thinnest she had ever seen. No feet extended into the grass beneath the tattered remains of his hakama; there was only empty air.

"Finally, someone stronger has awoken me." He brandished the blade before him, sunlight glinting off its deadly edge. "Now, prepare yourself, little warrior. With your death, I shall finally be free!"

Fumi wanted to scream, but the sound caught in her throat, her entire body paralyzed by fear. Her parents always told her ghosts weren't real, and she had grown up thinking their word was gospel. She wished she could tell them just how wrong they were.

With fiery determination in his eyes, the dead man rushed towards her, his purple robes billowing behind him like a war banner, his deadly blade aimed right at her heart.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter II: Cursed

The sword buried itself into the tree behind the girl, wobbling awkwardly when its owner released his grip on its hilt. Muramasa narrowly missed killing her, only changing the direction of his forward thrust when he saw she what she was.

"You're not a warrior." He hovered over the girl's trembling form and pulled his blade free, showering chips of bark. "You're just some damn child."

A child in a pink striped shirt and odd knee-length pants like nothing he'd ever seen before. Frightened brown eyes stared up at him from behind a tangled veil of dark hair. Her round, delicate face reminded him of someone from so long ago who he had tried desperately to forget, though in his heart never could.

This was not how it was supposed to be. A child shouldn't be able to attract the attention of the cursed blade. Yet somehow, she had. And that was bad, dangerously bad for the both of them.

"This is quite the predicament we're in." He gently grasped the cool metal of his blade, tightening his grip until he felt the edge bite flesh and draw hot blood. It would thirst for the girl's blood from now on, but his own would sate it enough to coax it back into its scabbard. "Tell me, where do you come from, girl? What village allows such—" his eyes scanned her from top to bottom, "interesting choice of dress and fails to teach their children not to venture into the cursed woods?"

Any breath the girl might have used to speak was too busy rushing in and out of her lungs at steadily increasing intervals. Her unblinking eyes never left Muramasa's stern, scowling face. A shaky hand reached up to cup itself around a silver pendant dangling from her neck. Interrogating this girl was not going to be a chore he enjoyed.

"Quit your hyperventilating, you're not going to die," he said. Even he didn't have it in him to kill a child.

He lowered himself into the grass to take a seat, the high collar of his threadbare cloak hiding the deep frown that formed on his face. The lack of any feeling past the knee startled him. He had been bound to that damn rock for so long he'd forgotten how much of his body had been consumed by his sword.

Muramasa glanced sidelong at the girl, his pupils tightened to thin, annoyed slits. "Child, I'm waiting for an answer."

"I AM NOT A CHILD!" The girl's hysterical, shrill voice sent a cloud of roosting blackbirds high into the sky. She lurched upward and stalked towards him, jabbing an index finger towards his face.

Muramasa held his ground, unperturbed. Was this unarmed girl really threatening a man with a weapon? Either she was dreadfully brave, or dreadfully stupid. Muramasa expected the latter.

"I am not a kid, I am sixteen years-old, and how dare you talk to me like that after trying to murder me!" She stomped a foot on the ground, her eyes burning hotter than the angry blush staining her pale cheeks. "And I don't know what the heck you mean by cursed forest and village. I come from Sakura New Town and the only nearby forest surrounds the holy shrine!" She paused, breathing heavily, her hands balled into fists. Her stiff shoulders appeared to relax as her breathing slowed, rational thought fading back into her mind. "And I…I just want to go home."

He'd never heard of this 'Sakura New Town'. Either she was nuts or, as he was beginning to believe, she was a victim of yokai mischief.

"And I just want to know why you can see me. Although I have a feeling," he rose in one fluid motion, reaching out to lift her pendant towards his face, "that the answer to my question isn't far."

"Hands off." The girl jerked away from his touch. "This watch belonged to my grandfather."

"Your grandfather was an interesting sort, then." A yokai hunter's talisman. The air around the pendant – or 'watch', as she put it – shimmered and wavered with an unmistakable supernatural aura. Muramasa bet that if he removed it from the girl, he'd suddenly appear just as invisible to her as the wind. But the question still remained: what was a clueless girl like her doing with such an artifact?

He decided to let the matter rest, knowing full well the girl wouldn't know the answer to that question herself. Instead he leaned forward and indicated to her outfit with a disdainful flick of his wrist. "You still haven't explained the clothes, girl."

"What the heck else could you want from me?" She pointed to her garish pink top. "This is what everyone wears! You're the one who's dressed like he just came back from a costume party."

"These clothes weren't always rags. When I was alive they were the standard sort of clothes a man of my class would wear. You, on the other hand, are wearing something I can't even give name to, it's so outlandish." He'd never seen anything like what she wore in his life. Or his afterlife, for that matter. All evidence pointed to the worst possible sort of yokai mischief. "I fear for you that you don't even belong in this era."

"Wait, you mean I'm in the past?" She began looking around frantically, moving her head so quickly Muramasa was afraid she'd give herself whiplash. "No way, this can't be real, time travel isn't real, I've gotta be dreaming."

"I hate to inform you, but time travel is the least of your worries." He almost felt bad for her. "The blade you touched, you know, the one now hidden in my scabbard?"

The hysteria began creeping back into her voice. "That stupid thing I cut myself on?"

It irked him that he agreed with her; it was a stupid blade and he had been even stupider to give his life for it. "Yes, that blade." Muramasa narrowed his eyes. "It needs a consort, and it chooses its consort based on the worth of their soul."

The girl considered the bleeding cut on her palm, anxiety playing over her features. "How exactly does it weigh your soul?"

"By tasting your blood," he said, hoping she realized just what a mess she caused by touching it. "I am its consort now, but as of ten minutes ago, it no longer has eyes for me. It has tasted the blood of someone whose soul it believes to be far worthier. And to seal the pact, it wishes to claim your life."

The girl sat down in the tall grass, her eyes widening as she mentally digested his words. "No. There has to be some mistake, I'm not some strong warrior or anything." She chuckled uneasily. "I can't look after a cursed sword."

"That's not for you to decide." The skin around his eyes crinkled in resentment. "Nor for I. It has a mind of its own."

"I'll just find a way back to my own time, then." Her nervous fingers tightly gripped the watch as if squeezing the thing to death would transport her back home. "It can't make me its consort if it's not even in the same timeline as me."

"I can assure you, it still exists in your old timeline. It's just sealed." He cocked his head, the blue flame seated upon his hat flickering as it courted the summer breeze. He wished he had some alcohol, it would make explaining to this girl so much more tolerable. "Which it won't be anymore, now that you've traveled back in time and awakened it."

The girl's eyes welled up with tears. "I guess there's no way for me to avoid getting killed by that thing, is there?"

"I'm not one to stain my hands with the blood of a child." He felt a sense of petty triumph when her expression shifted from miserable to annoyed. "I do know of a way to free both of us."

"I freed you. You are free." She spat the words, her tone sharp and angry. "You don't need any more freedom."

"And that is where you are wrong. At this point, I simply wish to die. That will be my freedom." He hated that the most about his sword, hated that its magic would not allow him to die. Long ago Muramasa had wanted to live forever, even at the cost of his body, but after years and years of being trapped in that one spot in the woods, he was through with immortality. Fumika's death would have allowed his soul to pass on, but he refused to transfer the curse to someone so young.

But to the one man whose image was hatefully etched forever into his mind, well, he couldn't think of a better person to pass his burden off to. He couldn't think of someone with a mightier soul.

"I know of someone whose soul is surely stronger than yours," said Muramasa. "I have a score to settle with him, and what better way to settle it than in a way that will free both you and I. You'll have to travel with me, of course, but such is a small price to pay for your life."

"And if I don't want to travel with you?" She stood and crossed her arms, looking away from him as though the very sight of him repulsed her, which it probably did.

"Then the sword will begin its hunt. The farther away you are, the less control over it I will have." He narrowed his yellow eyes. "Eventually my body will be nothing more than its puppet, and when it kills you, you shall take my place."

The angry tension in her body wavered and fled, her stiff shoulders slumping forward in defeat. She sighed heavily, staring down at her feet, her shoes just as outlandish and colorful as her outfit. "Of all the screw-ups in my life, this is by far the worst ever."

"If it's any consultation, I'm not exactly happy about being chained to you either. But what's happened can not be changed if we don't do this together."

"Fine. I'm in. I guess." She stiffly thrust her hand out at him. "If we're going to be stuck together, I guess we should probably have some proper introductions here. I'm Fumika Kodama, but you can call me 'Fumi'."

Muramasa's eyes stared from her tiny hand, to her face – now set in determination against their combined ill fate – and then back to her hand. "What, exactly, are you doing?"

"Trying to shake your hand, dummy!" She took a step towards him, still holding her arm out like a fool. "You know, that thing you do when you meet new people?"

"I've been trapped to a rock for more years than I can count, I don't have time to learn the customs of futuristic fools."

"Uugh." Fumika reached forward and grabbed his hand, giving it a forceful jerk of a shake. "There! It's that simple. Now tell me you name. Or am I gonna have to make one up for you?"

Muramasa snatched his hand back, fingering the lengths of gauze she had shaken into disarray. The girl had a strong grip for a kid.

"Call me Muramasa." He had a different name once, but as with many things from his past, he had forgotten it.

"Can I call you Mura?"

"I told you to call me Muramasa." Muramasa began to unbutton the tattered cloak that clung to his shoulders. "You can, however, wear this to cover up that mess."

He dropped the cloak down on her, watching it billow around her like a sail. The thing fit her like a dress, perfect for what he needed it for. They couldn't travel with her wearing an outfit like that. It would draw far too much attention.

Fumika tugged at the edges of the cloak, adjusting it around her narrow shoulders. "Mess?"

"That," he gestured towards her with one hand, struggling to find words to describe the hideous colors and goofy pants, "whatever it is, that you are wearing. I'd rather people not pay any attention to us while we're on the road."

Fumika sighed beneath the collar of the cloak. "Do you always have to be this rude?"

"And do you always have to complain so much?" He turned his back on her, looking over his shoulder as he continued to speak. "Come on, we're going into town. I still have all the money on me I had when I died. It should be enough to get you something decent."

xxx

He was glad the town was still where he remembered it was. Not that a town could leave, of course, but it could be abandoned or destroyed or become the victim of some other such calamity. Much to Muramasa's relief, it had been neither abandoned nor destroyed and was, somewhat alarmingly, not dissimilar to how it had been when he died. The rural town looked like the same old boring village he remembered, its population consisting mainly of serfs and with more vast, rippling rice patties than houses. Granted, his patchwork memory was vague and unreliable, but he liked to think that if things had changed drastically he would at least notice it in the same way he noticed Fumika's horrible clothing.

"You know," Fumika began, speaking the first words shared between them since they left the clearing, "you complained about me looking suspicious in my outfit, but yours is still weird by these people's standards." She passed by a middle aged woman carrying a wooden pail of water, who paid the travelers no mind as she continued her purposeful walk down the dusty road. The woman wore only a simple brown kosode.

Muramasa chuckled, thankful that the humans around them could only see one freak amongst two. "That's because they can't see me."

"But I can see you," she said.

"I'm a dead man." He cocked his head in mock curiosity, the tags on the rim of his hat dangling in the breeze. "Could you see dead people before you discovered your grandpa's magic watch?"

Fumika opened her mouth to retort, but any defiance quickly died before leaving her lips. "No, I guess I couldn't."

"There's your answer. No magic, no sight." Unless the spirit in question wanted to be seen, which he absolutely didn't.

She stayed silent after that, clearly unwilling to be subject to any more passive-aggressive ridicule. Good. He liked it better that way. Her voice was already starting to grate on him. The one nice thing about being bound to a stone was that headaches had been completely nonexistent.

After a few minutes of seemingly aimless wandering, they passed exactly what Muramasa hoped they'd find: a squat little dwelling with the word 'seamstress' crudely painted on its side in bold, black lettering.

"Alright, girl, we're where we need to be." He began fishing around in the second layer of his outfit until his fingers brushed the ring of coins he'd kept hidden since he died. "Catch." Muramasa tossed them at the girl, arching a mildly impressed brow when she reached up and caught them single handedly.

She gazed down at the coins, eyes wide, for they must have seemed like antiques to her. In her era they were probably worth a fortune. "How much is this going to buy me?"

"I don't know." He shrugged; after an eternity he couldn't be certain what you could get with a single amount. "It should be enough to get you something decent. Make it simple and just ask the lady what you can get for the price of the coins."

"Alright. Uh, thank you." She darted into the shop, not bothering to wait for his response.

Muramasa took her absence as the perfect opportunity for a quick nap on the seamstress's front porch. She probably wouldn't be long given their "we'll take what we get" budget, but any moment of rest was a good one considering how much hellish traveling he'd be doing with the girl. He pulled the remnants of his legs up as if he were sitting on an invisible bench and lowered the brim of his hat, completely concealing his face from the sight of any other passing spirits. Not that he wasn't confident he could fight any ne'r-do-wells that came his way; he simply wished not to be bothered.

He was just starting to nod off when he heard Fumika exclaim her cheerful thanks to the seamstress, followed by the clack of her new wooden sandals hitting the porch. Terrible timing.

"If this less of a mess?" she asked in sarcastic imitation of Muramasa.

He slowly opened his eyes to the image of the teen in a grey kosode with an even darker grey yumaki wrap encircling her waist. She wore a second-hand pair of wooden sandals a size too large for her, and the silver watch hung heavily around her neck. Her hair had been combed back into its high ponytail. Fumika's brows were pinched in impatience, angrily waiting for his answer.

"Absolutely better." His gaze fell downward towards the shoes. "Except for those, they're too big, but if that's all you could get, it's still better than what you came here in."

She blinked as a wave of confusion washed over her face. "Wow, uh, I thought you were going to be a huge jerk over the colors. Thanks, I guess." She held his cloak out to him, the tattered garment neatly folded into a small rectangle.

He took the cloak from her hands and began fashioning it around his neck. "I prefer the term 'honest' to describe the way I assess things, and honestly speaking, it looks volumes better than –"

The edges of Fumika's shadow flickered, the movement so subtle that it would have gone unnoticed by anyone less observant than Muramasa. The shadow should not have been so long at this hour, and its edges should never ripple when touched by the wind.

Muramasa's hand darted to the hilt of his blade. "I need you to move, girl."

Her gaze fell to the position of his hand, her eyes becoming like saucers when she saw he was ready to draw his sword. He knew what she was thinking, that the sword was taking control and that he was going to try and kill her for the second time that day. Muramasa cursed himself for that blunder. He needed to kill someone, but it wasn't even close to her. Her shadow, however…

"Idiot, I'm not going to kill you," Muramasa hissed, his tone becoming deadly serious. "Now move."

Panic flashing through her eyes, Fumika ran forward, her feet moving cautiously on the dusty road, kicking up sandy clouds. With a clear shot of her shadow, Muramasa unsheathed his sword and in one swing brought the cursed blade down into the dirt. The ghostly metal severed the shadow from Fumika's body. Muramasa pointed the blade at the shadow, now rising from the ground and molding itself into its true form.

"You were always good at sneaking around, but you were never the best." Muramasa tilted his head backwards, just enough so that the newcomer could see his gloating smile over the edge of his collar.  
"That was always me, wasn't it, Kagero?"

He had forgotten about his old apprentice. Only when he saw the dead man hiding in Fumika's shadow did he remember he ever had one to begin with. Last he saw Kagero, the man – no, at the time he'd been a mere boy – was still living and breathing, bumbling around and being glaringly unremarkable at everything other than being unremarkable.

Muramasa couldn't remember anything about Kagero's living appearance other than that he had been small and more nervous than a mouse, but his spiritual vessel appeared as non-human as Muramasa's own. He looked like a human-sized scroll of paper dyed a deep purple, with glowing yellow eyes peering out from behind a black mask. The only article of clothing on his person was a black shirt with mesh sleeves stopping inches before the elbow. He wore a metal band just above his eyes, something stupid he wore while he living as well. There had been an equally as stupid reason to explain why he wore it, but that information was lost to Muramasa. Kagero held an oversized shuriken in one hand, brandishing it before him as if that would make Muramasa feel threatened. It didn't.

"It was you," Kagero's voice, still soft but lacking that squeaky, boyish edge, told Muramasa that his former apprentice had at least met his end after reaching puberty, "but now it's me. It's definitely me!"

"Quiet yourself, Kagero," said Muramasa, chuckling darkly. "I see you've given up the sword for the shuriken, even after all I taught you. You dishonor your master. I have no wish to speak with those who dishonor their teachers."

A gentle tug at the hem of Muramasa's cloak. Fumika was behind him, using his much larger form as her ghostly shield. "Muramasa, was he your apprentice?"

Muramasa sighed. "Unfortunately."

"Hey! I'm not deaf!" Kagero narrowed his pupil-less eyes and pointed an accusing twig of a finger towards his old master. "You never really taught me anything, all you ever cared about was yourself. I tried to meet your expectations, but you never recognized me for anything I ever did."

"I died when you were, what, thirteen? Fourteen?" Muramasa shrugged, turning his back towards Kagero. He saw that Fumika had retreated to the seamstress's porch, pretending to be preoccupied in her own thoughts while occasionally tossing a nervous glance Muramasa's way. "It isn't like I had much time to recognize you. The least you could do would be to carry on my traditions after I was no longer here."

"I would never try to preserve the memory of someone as horrible as you!" Muramasa couldn't see him, but it sounded like Kagero was fighting back tears. "I have waited nearly eighty years for you to be released from those woods so I can show you that I'm the superior warrior."

Muramasa looked over his shoulder, his posture insultingly lax. "You were never one for jokes, Kagero, but I almost laughed."

"S-Shut up!" For a moment his voice sounded boyishly shrill. "I will not be disrespected by you like this. Come, watch my hazy dance, for it's the last thing you'll ever see!"

His shadowy body rippling like water, he dove towards Muramasa, his shuriken ready to sever the lifelines of the man he once lovingly called his master.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter III: Pupil

Muramasa didn't even bother brandishing his sword. Instead, he whirled around and rammed its ornate, wooden hilt right into the left side of his former apprentice's face.

The loud crack of wood hitting flesh was enough to make Fumi wince in sympathy.

Kagero went careening end over end to land sprawled in the dirt. A ring of tan dust rose up around him.

He looked up from the ground, coughing heavily. His left eye was already starting to swell shut. "You…You jerk!" Kagero wobbled up unsteadily from his landing zone, swaying like a drunkard. "You are supposed to fight me, not hit me."

"If you couldn't even dodge that, then you will never stand against me as a true warrior," said Muramasa. "Give up before you hurt yourself."

Fumi watched as Kagero's yellow eyes filled with tears. She felt sorry for him. While she couldn't disagree with Muramasa, she was not a fan of how he spoke to the other yokai. "I guess you're right," Kagero said.

"Good. I'm glad we've reached a proper understanding of how things work." Muramasa pointed his sword towards Kagero, the sharp tip inches away from his face. "Now pay up."

"Oh no." Kagero jolted out of his sadness, tiny beads of tears flying away from his face. "Please don't make me do it, you know I hate doing it."

"Hey." Fumi couldn't stand watching this cruel exchange any longer. "Whatever you want him to do, just have me do it." It couldn't be worse than the ball and chain of a curse she'd already afflicted upon herself.

Muramasa rolled his eyes tilting his head in her direction. "I can't, it'll just make the blade hungrier." He snickered, watching an old man hobble by, only to pause not far from Fumi. "I'd also be careful when speaking to us yokai in public."

Oh god. She noticed the old man had paused to watch her, a look of suspicion and concern shadowing his dark eyes. To any outsider, she looked like she was having an angry conversation with no one but herself. Her face burned with embarrassment, only cooling once the old man shook his head dismissively and began to amble away. Living in this world with a rude yokai companion that only she could see was going to take some serious getting used to.

"Please," Kagero continued his feeble bargaining attempt, "I'll do anything but touch that thing. Please tell me you remember that I hate that awful sword."

"I actually do remember that you hate this awful sword." He stalked forward, letting the pointed tip push gently into Kagero's chest. "But I already cut myself on it once today. I don't feel like doing it again, and since you're the one who made me draw it to begin with, you should have the honor of putting it back to sleep."

Fumi saw Muramasa slice his own hand in the woods before returning the sword to its scabbard, but she had tried not to think about it and managed to keep it from her mind until now. If Muramasa's name was a reference to the legendary swordsmith – and she was certain it was – that meant that in order to return the blade to its scabbard, it needed to taste an offering of fresh blood. A wave of squeamishness caused her to shudder. And to think it wanted her to serve in his place.

Kagero groaned through his nose as he extended a hesitant hand towards the blue blade. "I'm only doing this because you spared my life." He grabbed the tip and yanked his dainty purple hand down the sword, leaving a dribbling trail of red in its wake.

"Much obliged, Kagero," said Muramasa, sheathing his blade and bowing in a way that was far too exaggerated to be sincere. "Now go. Leave. I have more important things at hand than catching up with old 'friends'."

"No, please don't leave!" Kagero reached out towards Muramasa, trying to grab onto his cloak. He missed, toppling face-first into the dirt. "Please take me with you, I'm so tired of being alone."

Muramasa ignored him, slowly floating past Fumi's seat on the porch. "Let's go, Fumika."

"Aren't you being kind of a bully?" Fumi didn't care if she sounded like a patronizing mother; she couldn't stand hearing Muramasa berate his old apprentice like this. She leaped out of her seat and wandered out into the road, slipping her arms beneath Kagero's and hoisting him to his feet. "It's alright, Muramasa and I are traveling together." She shot him a venomous glance, hoping he understood that together meant she also got to make important decisions. "He might be saying no, but I'm saying yes."

Muramasa glared at her in exasperation. "You would really invite that fool to travel with us?"

She used the long sleeve of her kosode to wipe at the scroll yokai's tear-stained face. "Yeah. And I'll even offer up my shadow."

"W-Wait, you mean it?" Kagero's little eyes widened. "I promise I won't be a bother to you. You won't even know I'm there."

"You don't have to hide yourself," Fumi said, frowning. "Just because Muramasa is a jerk doesn't mean – "

Muramasa cut her off. "You don't get it. That's literally just how he is." He closed his eyes half way, looking equal parts tired and annoyed. "If Fumika and I are going to be making these kinds of decisions together, then you must abide by my rules as well, Kagero."

Kagero had already retreated into her shadow. "Fine."

"Good," said Muramasa. "You get to be my lackey. If I need something, you will fetch it for me. If I want something, you will fetch that too. Anything I say goes. Got it?"

A pair of sad gold eyes appeared on the face of Fumi's shadow. "Just like old times, then?"

Muramasa chuckled. "Precisely. Let's leave now, both of you. The less attention we draw, the better."

Fumika wrinkled her nose at him. He had a point, but it didn't mean she had to like it. "Okay, we're coming."

He began drifting down the stretch of road leading out of town. "Hurry, I want to cover as much ground before nightfall."

Nightfall. Fumika didn't look forward to that. Walking around in this fantastical, unfamiliar era where spirits openly roamed was one thing during the day, but another entirely at night. Would there be more strange creatures out and about after dark? If so, she couldn't assume they would be as tolerant of humans as were Kagero and Muramasa. A shiver traversed her back despite the summer heat.

Awkward in her new wooden sandals, Fumi ran after the swordsman, suddenly sharing his eagerness to cover as much distance as possible while the sun still shone.

xxx

Hyakki-Hime's heart was not always a dead thing frozen in ice. There was once a time when the princess of a thousand demons had a heart as warm and open as any other; a time when joy, rage, and sorrow governed her actions just as freely as they did to any mortal. Her emotional compass had turned its needle towards love once, and the feelings between her and that mortal samurai had been so mutually magnificent that she gave a bit of her power to make him as undying her. Demon magic always came with a price, yet still, he had taken it, giving a bit of himself so that the two of them could be together forever.

Alas, Hyakki soon learned humans were a loathsome sort, a multiplying blight upon the universe – corporeal and not – that deserved no love, no hate, no joy, no fear. Humans deserved to descend into the black abyss of nothingness from which there was no escape.

Maybe that was why it had been so easy to betray her first and only love.

She consumed her own emotions, froze her heart to bitter nothingness, just to gain enough power to expand her influence into the mortal realm, to let droves of the demons she oversaw roam unchecked among the humans. Go forth, Hyakki had told them, and wreak all the havoc you can until there is nothing left upon which to wreak. Spare no one, not even the human souls who were no longer quite so human. Not even her samurai.

Yet, even voided of emotions, her power wasn't quite enough.

The power she used to grant her lover his own immortal shell would have been enough had she been able to take it back, and, blinded by a heart that still adored Hyakki, he had been willing to give up his immortality, and even his very soul, to fuel her passions. If not for his stupid brother, Hyakki would have succeeded in taking his life – and anything he might have experienced after it – for her cause.

Until now she had no way to get at him, for he was so powerfully locked away by his sibling's holy powers that not even she could touch him nor the magic she infused him with. It was dormant, and while dormant it was of no use to her.

But now, suddenly, it wasn't. She felt it rush back into the world like a flicker of light, the power calling to her, beckoning for her to retake what was hers.

Would he give it up now, though? A lot could change in a hundred years. In a hundred years, a man could lose his love, just as a woman could give up hers.

In the darkness of her throne room, standing before the tall stained glass window looking over the darkened city of her realm, she summoned her underlings, their shadowy forms flickering and rising as they rose up out of the marble floors at the command of their mistress. They came in every shape, every size; some long and winding like snakes, dripping globs of shadow, others almost human in form, but with arms and legs too thin and too long. Some were nothing but small, shifting blobs of darkness hardly larger than a housecat. All of them had no faces, only purple eyes glowing with an unnatural, sickly light.

"He awakens," she told them, a cold smile forming upon her flawlessly beautiful face. Her red eyes narrowed, their stare clinical and neutral. "I need you to go get him. Kill him, if you must. Just take back what is mine"


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter IV: Lost

Once night fell, the trio chose to make camp away from the road, off in the cover of the woods where their chances of discovery by a nighttime passerby would be slim. Originally, Fumi agreed with the logic of this plan, however, now she wished she'd made an objection. Her body was already sore from walking in her uncomfortable wooden sandals, but the hard, lumpy ground upon which she slept made the pain in her aching limbs feel downright excruciating. Swarms of merciless, biting insects filled the humid air, and left massive itching welts in their wake. Her kosode and knee-length jeans beneath it gave the bugs free access to her legs, and if they weren't dining upon her lower limbs, they were making a meal of her face and scalp. She never realized how grateful she was for insect repellent. What she would have given in that moment to have such a luxury.

"Kagero," she whispered to the shadow spirit as she slapped at a mosquito buzzing past her ear. "Kagero, help me, what do I do?"

There was a rustle of maple leaves from above Fumi's head. She looked up to see Kagero peeing down at her from the lowest bough, his red scarf flapping in the breeze.

"Huh, what?" He sounded confused and tired.

"The bugs," she hissed, trying not to wake Muramasa, present only as a dark lump of clothing curled up against the base of another maple. "They are biting me all over, and keep flying up the skirt of this stupid outfit. What do I do?"

"I don't know." He yawned around his words. "I'm a yokai, they don't bother going after me."

Fumi groaned, feeling a new welt rising on her elbow. She scratched at it with such ferocity that her skin tore.

"This is ridiculous." Panic crept into her voice while tears began to condense at the corners of her eyes. "I can't do this, why did I ever think I could do this?"

It was almost comical that she had thought this quest, this bizarre trek through a land miles and ages away from home, would have been easy. Walk cheerfully through the countryside with her crabby guardian and his cheerful former toady, meet all sorts of interesting folk from days gone by, kill Muramasa's mysterious adversary (thus freeing him from the shackles of his evil curse!), and send her homeward bound before anyone even realized she was missing! What a joke. Perhaps it was the hot, moonless night, or perhaps the fatigue, but it suddenly dawned upon her that the world around her was unforgiving.

She let herself cry, sobs that were quiet but so intense that they wracked her body and tightened the muscles in her gut, turning it sour with misery. She missed her bed, and her family, and her comfortable home free of bloodthirsty bugs. She missed Keita. She missed Kanchi and Kuma. And for all Fumi knew, she might never see them again.

Something closed over her face, clinging to her mouth and nose. A scream rose from her throat; suddenly she didn't care if Kagero or Muramasa heard her.

"Sssssh. Shut up, you're going to wake this entire god damn forest, and if something comes to kill us, it's going to be me who has to deal with it."

The heavy cloth was pulled down around her neck and then tied in front like a hood by two alarmingly gentle bandaged hands. Fumi was firmly spun around so a folded bundle could be shoved into her arms.

"There," Muramasa said in hushed tones as he further adjusted the makeshift hood around her face. "It won't keep them all out, but it will keep out most of them. You can use the shirt to cover your legs."

She struggled to hold his gaze, his sleep-rimmed eyes were even more unsettling when they were looking at her with something other than thinly-veiled annoyance. His nearly featureless face scarcely looked human at all, but his sudden expression of genuine concern made him seem far less alien, an unsettling reminded that he had once been living.

Fumi's train of thought came to a cacophonous crash of a halt when she made the mistake of letting her gaze sink lower. A latticework of scars crisscrossed his thin, shadowy body marring nearly every inch of skin she could see from his waist all the way up to his neck.

"Dear god…" Her horrified voice was quiet, hushed with mortified wonder as she pondered just how those wounds came to be.

"What?" Tensing, he glanced over his shoulder, seeking some adversary that did not exist.

"It's you scars. There's so many of them, it's horrifying."

"How did you think I died? In my sleep?" He laughed dryly. Eyes narrowed, he held out a hand, twitching the tips of his fingers. "If it offends you that much, give me back my clothes."

"No." She inched away a little, defensively tugging on the edges of the hood. "I'm sorry, it just kind of…spooked me, is all."

He sighed, sounding wearier than she'd ever heard him. "It's fine. Just, try to get some sleep."

"Uh, what about you, though? Won't they bite you now?"

He chuckled, the first real laugh she'd actually heard from him. "Unless these bugs like the blood of the dead, they're not going to bother with me."

Muramasa might have actually been smiling but Fumi found it was hard to look at him without his top. Her eyes kept trying to return to the scars. She stared past him at his hat that he'd hung on a low-lying tree branch. "I didn't really think about that, sorry."

"Don't be sorry, just go to sleep." He fell out of the air like a stone, curling up with his back towards her.

Fumi may have laughed if she wasn't feeling hideously flustered and slightly frightened. She sat there for a moment, listening to the crickets sing their midnight aria while the fireflies danced flickering waltzes in the underbrush. Somewhere, off in the distance, a fox let out its keening call. Even with her shield against the bugs, she didn't know how easily sleep would come to her.

"Muramasa?" She risked calling his name, if only just to talk.

He didn't answer, either because he was ignoring her, or because he was already asleep.

xxx

"Alright, girl, get up. We're heading out."

Why was such a deep and angry voice yelling at her? It was summer vacation, Fumi could sleep until nightfall if she wanted. It was probably just Keita coming over unannounced to be a pain. Deliberately annoying her this early was a very Keita thing to do. If she just ignored him, maybe he'd go home. Wasn't like he lived far. She'd explain to him later after she'd napped for a few more hours that she hadn't slept well last night.

"I don't care if you slept like hell, I'm not letting you lounge around. I'm starving, I want to get to the next village."

She was bodily lifted up from her resting place by someone far stronger than Keita.

"Wait, what, huh?" Fumika blinked sheepishly, a sunny outdoor morning fading into view. Her body felt incredibly warm, even for a hot summer day. She looked down, noticing the scarf wrapped around her head and the shirt that now sat by her feet like a violet puddle. Suddenly she remembered where she was and who she was with. Being woken by Keita would have been the nicer option.

Muramasa held out an expectant hand. "I'll take my clothes back now."

It was worse looking at him in the daytime, for the sun revealed even the smallest of puckered cuts.

"Here, take them." She removed the scarf and picked his shirt off the ground, placing them firmly in his outstretched hand. One look at her ankles, pocked with angry wed welts, reminded her of why she slept so poorly last night.

"Thanks," he said gruffly, shrugging the long cloak back on and fastening the scarf around his neck.

"How far until the next village?" Fumika could feel hunger creeping up on her. She couldn't believe neither of them had remembered to buy food at the village where they'd purchased her kosode.

"Not far." Muramasa placed his hat back on his head, the blue flame in its center flaring to life. "At least, it shouldn't be."

Fumika arched a brow. "Shouldn't be?"

"Memory's not the best after all these years." He floated over to the tree in which Kagero slept, staring up its trunk towards the branches. "Hey, Kagero, get down here, we're leaving." When Kagero didn't answer, Muramasa unsheathed his blade and in one smooth swing severed the lowest branch from the tree, depositing a screaming Kagero onto the ground.

"Alright, alright, I'm awake, I'm awake!" He slithered upright into a standing position, nervously adjusting his crimson scarf. "You couldn't wait five minutes for me to wake up?"

"I didn't wait for Fumika, so I'm not waiting for you." He drifted off towards the road where the forest began to thin. "Now get moving, I don't wanna be here until it's dark out again."

"He's really grumpy today," Kagero whispered to Fumi as they followed the swordsman out of the woods. The road outside was dusty and well-traveled, but at this hour the three of them were the only ones there.

"He mentioned wanting breakfast really badly." She kept her voice as quiet as Kagero's. "I didn't even know you ghosts could eat."

"We can," he said, "we just don't have to. I still eat onigiri when I get the chance, and I highly doubt he's given up his love for sea urchin roe."

Fumika wrinkled her nose. "He would like urchin roe."

They fell silent after that, walking side by side at a leisurely pace, purposefully trailing behind to avoid invoking Muramasa's early morning wrath. It wasn't long before Muramasa stopped walking.

"Kagero," Fumi said, "I think something might be up. He stopped walking."

Up ahead, Muramasa stood in the center of the road, his hand hovering above the hilt of his sword. He stood perfectly still, the only motion on his body the flickering flame on his hat and his tattered clothes flapping in the gentle breeze.

Fumika felt her heart sink with worry. The last time he stood like that was when they'd encountered Kagero. She knew whatever it was this time wouldn't be another awkward and friendly little shadow spirit.

"Maybe he has to go to the bathroom." Kagero tried to sound nonchalant, but he couldn't conceal the nervous edge to his tone. "You know how I said we yokai can eat? What goes in, must come–"

"Don't be silly, he's ready to draw his sword." She grabbed Kagero by the wrist and began running up the road towards Muramasa. "This can't be good."

Fumika and Kagero reached Muramasa's side just as he unsheathed his blade, its eerie blue metal glowing even in the bright early morning sun. He threw his free arm out to the side, preventing the younger duo from running ahead of him.

"Don't." His brows were pinched in a stern glare.

There was someone else standing in the center of the road up ahead. The figure's skin possessed a ghostly pallor and his white hair stuck up from his head in pointed, gelled spikes. He wore a historically out-of-place faux leather trench coat, and held a scythe in his hand, its massive, curved blade glinting in the sun like a silver crescent moon. Even from where she stood, Fumi could see that his bright teal eyes, each rimmed with heavy lines of kohl, lacked any visible sclera. There was no way this fellow was human.

Kagero retreated into Fumi's shadow, and Fumi slipped behind Muramasa. "Muramasa, who is that?"

"I don't know," he said. "I'm going to go have a little chat with him."

Fumika peeked around him, staring at his blade, held out in front of him in a way that was anything but friendly. "With your sword out like that?"

"His weapon is pathetic. Once he sees mine, he won't want to fight me." He began to drift forward, but was jerked back by some unseen force. "You're…going to have to let go of me."

Fumika hadn't even realized she was clinging to his cloak with white-knuckled desperation. "I-I'm sorry!"

He sighed, rolling his eyes. "Just stay back."

She wasn't sure what she would do – could do – if a fight between two powerful yokai broke out. She was just a human. Fumi knew that if this strange man could defeat (kill? Was there death after death?) Muramasa, her fears of becoming cursed like him would be alleviated. But that still wouldn't solve her issue of getting home. Oddly enough, it seemed only Muramasa himself was ready to aid her with that problem, despite his cruelly sharpened tongue. She didn't want to see him hurt if it could be avoided.

"Hey. You," Muramasa called as he casually drifted towards the strange man. "What's your name?"

The man grinned, revealing a mouthful of white, vampiric fangs. His eyes glittered with a mad sort of glee. "You carry the princess's sword, and yet you don't know who I am?"

"I'm surprised she never told you about me," continued the strange man, pursing his black-painted lips. "Though, she never did like me much. Always saw me as a bit of a rogue demon. Said I'm too soft on humans. No matter. I am Demon Okure, the Grim Reaper. And you, Muramasa, have lost your purpose in life!" He swung his scythe down towards Muramasa, aiming for the swordsman's head.

Fumika screamed and closed her eyes, only to open them again seconds later as a loud metallic clang rang out through the forest.

Muramasa brought his sword up to parry the blow, locking it with the sharpened edge of Okure's massive scythe. The muscles in his slender arms trembled as he held his weapon against the pressure of the reaper's blow. His face was contorted into a grimace of pain. A single tear of sweat rolled down his forehead.

"Lost purpose in my life?" He darted away, Okure's scythe falling downward and cutting into the road. Muramasa swung towards Okure, but the other yokai smoothly raised his weapon to meet the blow. "How can I lose my purpose in life when I am already dead?"

"Life, death; the line between the two is a simple technicality. You're walking this earth, so as far as I'm concerned, you're alive." Okure back stepped away from Muramasa and swung his scythe towards the swordsman in a deadly undercut. Muramasa held his blade sideways to block the blow, however, instead of making direct impact, Okure pivoted his weight at the last second so that the tip of his scythe locked beneath Muramasa's blade.

"Shit." It was all Muramasa could mutter before his sword was forcibly ripped from his grasp.

The blade went tumbling through the air, landing at the reaper's feet. Muramasa scrambled forward to grab it, but Okure brought his knee up hard into the samurai's gut. Fumi heard the wind rush from Muramasa's lungs as he staggered, doubling over in pain. Okure rammed the top grip of his scythe down between Muramasa's shoulder blades, throwing him off balance. He stumbled and fell, his face kissing the dirt.

"Don't think I believe for a second that you truly want to help this girl." Okure nodded towards Fumika, who stood frozen in panic as she watched Muramasa get pulverized. "I know exactly what you intend to do with that blade, and who you intend to kill, and that's not how you reverse your curse!" He ground the heel of his boot into Muramasa's hand when the samurai reached out to try to grab the handle of his sword. "You have no reason to live anymore, not even as a ghost." He placed the point of his scythe beneath Muramasa's chin, forcing him to look skyward towards him. "You're coming down to the underworld with me, where neither you nor your sword will bother anyone again."

"Wait!" Fumi somehow found the voice, and the courage, to speak up. She ran towards Muramasa's prone figure in the road, tripping in her awkward sandals and skinning her knees once she finally reached him. She wrapped her arms protectively around his narrow shoulders. "Please, Okure, sir, don't kill him."

"What are you doing?" Muramasa just barely managed to croak out the question.

"That's a good question." Okure withdrew his scythe and arched a quizzical brow at Fumika. "What are you doing, little girl?"

Tremors of fear traveled down her arms, making her cling tighter to Muramasa's weakened body. She swallowed, her throat closing up painfully. "He's not as bad as you think."

"I can assure you, he's not as good as you think." Fumi couldn't be sure, but she swore she saw a grin twitch around his fangs.

"Maybe he's not, but I think he could be." She found the words were spilling out of her mouth before she could stop to think about them. "How about I make you a deal?"

"I don't really like deals." Okure grimaced as though the word tasted bitter on his tongue. "But I'll hear you out. Unlike him, you actually have a purpose in life."

"What if I help him find a purpose?" She tried to sound strong, but she feared she only sounded like a desperate beggar.

"Fumi…" Muramasa coughed, sending flecks of red onto the dusty road.

Fumi ignored Muramasa's pleading voice. She didn't have time to argue with him right now. "I promise I'll help him find a purpose if you just let us go."

A knowing hiss of laughter escaped Okure's lips. "How did I know you were going to say something like that? Ah, well." He banished his weapon in a puff of purple smoke. "If that's how you wish to play the game, then fine. I won't make a move to kill Muramasa as long as you're in this realm with him. My henchmen, however, will not be bound by any such rules. Do those sound like fair terms to you, Ms. Kodama?"

She glared at him, her gaze hard and unmoving. She didn't like those rules, but she wasn't much for bargaining and didn't know what else she could possibly organize to save Muramasa. At the very least it saved him from having to worry about Okure. She prayed Okure's minions weren't anywhere near as strong as he was.

Fumika nodded, her fingers grasping handfuls of Muramasa's baggy clothes. "Deal."

"Well, I shall be seeing you another day, Muramasa!" Okure turned around with a flourish, his long coat catching the breeze behind him. "I'd thank the girl if I were you. But don't forget, from this day forth, my henchmen will be on the hunt." He vanished, leaving behind nothing but a dark cloud of purple fog, which too soon vanished in the breeze.

Muramasa sighed heavily, his entire body going slack against her. "And how the hell do you suppose you're going to fulfill that promise?"

"I don't know." She didn't even have the vaguest idea; it had just seemed like a good compromise to make at the time.

"Yeah, didn't think so." Grabbing his sword, he attempted to stand up, but instead staggered forward onto the road, wincing in pain. "Damn it."

"Here, let me help you." Fumi knelt down and shifted her shoulders beneath his left arm, allowing him to lean against her.

He shrugged her off and shied away, one hand clutching his bruised middle. "I'm fine."

He didn't look fine, but she knew better than to argue. Sighing, she rose to her feet and brushed the dust from her knees. "How far until the next town?"

"Not far. Maybe a fourth of a kilometer."

"Alright." Longer than she would have liked, but she figured he would be alright until then.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter V: Shelter

They walked in silence along the dusty stretch of road. Muramasa occasionally grunted in pain, but was too full of pride to ask Fumi for help, and Fumi herself was too afraid to make the offer.

Up ahead, against the tapestry of stars now claiming the night, Fumi could see the black, solid form of a man-made structure loom into view. "Hey, guys. I see something up ahead."

"Thank the gods." He separated himself from the group, floating so fast that he barely managed to remain upright. When Fumi moved to assist him, he waved her off. "I can make it the rest of the way."

Fumi narrowed her eyes and huffed. She resisted the urge to grab him and force him to lean on her for support. "Sorry I care, gees."

His pupils darted in her direction, narrowed to slits, and then returned their attention to the wall. "Whatever. I'm fine."

When the trio stood outside of the tall wooden structure spanning the entire circumference of the town, they found they could only glance nervously between one another. No one wanted to say what everyone was thinking: where were the guards? Where were the torches on the outside of the wall? Why was everything so silent? Even at this hour there should have been some noise coming from within.

"So." Fumi strained her eyes against the top of the wall, trying to spot even a slight ghost of movement, anything that would tell her there were people still living in the town. "What now?"

"I don't remember there being a wall before." Kagero slithered out of the darkness, his eyes showing a mix of wonder and dismay. "I don't even know if I'd call it a town anymore. It's like a small city."

"That makes this even more concerning." Muramasa brought his hand thoughtfully to his mouth, pinching his lower lip. " _Someone_ should be here, even if it isn't the local militia."

Fumika walked up to the huge wooden doors, giving the one on the right a firm push. The door gently swung inward at Fumi's touch, its hinges protesting loudly. "Uh, I don't think it's supposed to do that."

"It's not, but I'm not staying another night out in the wilderness." Muramasa pushed against the heavy door with his shoulder, widening the gap. "We'll sleep in a damn abandoned building if we have to."

Once the gap was wide enough to accommodate the wide brim of Muramasa's sandogasa, he slipped inside. Fumika followed him with a nervous Kagero trailing at her heels.

The place inside was huge, not quite a city, but far more than a town. Disturbingly, the streets were barren save for several carts that appeared to have been abandoned on the spot not long ago. Some still bore unsold mountains of the day's wares. The lanterns lining the road were all dark, as were the buildings, save for one large structure seated high atop a hill overlooking the town. Its illuminated windows glared down at the trio from its lofty perch, judging them like the eyes of some angry god.

"This is bizarre," said Fumi. "Everything's just abandoned."

"Look there." Muramasa raised his arm and pointed towards the building on the hill's summit. "Someone still resides at the inn. Perhaps they will know what happened here."

"Maybe," said Kagero. "But how can we speak to them if the two of us are dead?"

In almost perfect unison, both yokai turned to stare expectantly at Fumika. She groaned in dismay, drawing an amused smirk from Muramasa. "Why do you guys have to throw me under the bus like this?"

Muramasa blinked in confusion, the smile melting off of his face. "What's a bus?"

"Never mind." She didn't feel like explaining gas-powered vehicles to an undead medieval samurai. "It means you're basically using me as your sacrifice."

"Just because the person up there won't be able to see me, doesn't mean they're immune to what I can do." Muramasa ran is thumb up the smooth handle of his sword, a vague threat directed towards whatever hypothetical adversary lurked in the inn. "I can assure you, they won't be allowed to harm you."

Somehow that didn't make her feel better.

xxx

The great edifice of the inn loomed above the trio, mere feet away but feeling like miles to Fumika as gravity clawed and pulled at her legs. The stone stairway stretching up the hill towards the building hadn't seemed long until they began to make their ascent. At the halfway point her lungs had begun to burn, and now nearly at the summit they felt like over-filled balloons just dying to burst. Kagero panted beside her, looking hardly better than she did.

"I've never seen a group of people so out of shape in my entire life." Muramasa was the only one not in a state of pain, having gently hovered his way up beside them, the entire time assuming a position not unlike someone calmly seated on a bench.

"You're the only one of us who doesn't have legs," Fumi said, her breath rushing out in heavy, painful gasps. "We'd feel good too if we could _float_ our way up."

"Whatever." He stared at the front door of the inn with an almost lustful look of anticipation. He would never admit it, but Fumi could tell he was tired and sore from his encounter with Okure. "I want to stay some place comfortable and dry."

Fumika scrambled her way to the front, not wanting Muramasa to take it upon himself to open the door. It was bad enough that the battered and bruised wraith had pushed open the door to the town, but it would be even worse if the innkeeper thought Fumi possessed supernatural powers when the door opened by some unseen force right before she strolled in. Fumi slid open the door and ushered her companions into the entrance hallway.

The interior of the inn was dimly lit and sparsely furnished with only a small scattering of cushions lining the wall beneath the rightmost window. The floor by the door was hardwood, but further in was raised a foot and covered in tatami mats. On the far wall facing the trio was a service desk adjacent to a flight of stairs rising towards the inn's second floor. There was no one behind it.

Fumika slipped off her sandals and ventured into the room, searching for any sign of life. Her companions followed silently behind her. "Hello? Is anyone home?"

She walked towards the desk, straining her ears but hearing only the crackle of the tiny flames dancing in the lanterns that lit the windows. When she reached the desk and peered over the side, standing on tip-toe to see over the edge, something swift and grey vaulted out of the darkness, heading right towards her.

Fumi screamed as something coarse and dry was slapped onto her forehead, the fright causing her to fall over onto her backside. She hit hard, the mats doing little to cushion her fall, and reached towards the offending object pasted to her forehead, finding it was some form of spirit tag written in an elaborate and archaic script.

"Be gone, you evil mononoke!" said a voice that sounded like an angry crow. "You'll never take my inn from me!"

The speaker was an old woman who looked twice as old as Fumika's grandmother, her skin was so traced with deep, snaking wrinkles. Her white, thinning hair had freed itself from the loose bun seated on top of her head and hung in stringy tangles around her ancient face. Her dark eyes, unusually bright for someone her age, looked upon the three friends with a fiery sort of hate.

Muramasa stood frozen beside Fumi, a tag stuck between his eyes and his sword hand inches away from the hilt of his blade. "Fumi, the tag." He spoke stiffly through a jaw that could barely move. "I can't mo –"

The woman slapped a second tag over his lips, silencing him. "Stronger than the other one, but still not strong enough for my tags." The woman took a swift glance towards the _other one_ to make sure the shadow spirit was still face-down where he'd fallen after suffering the same fate as Muramasa. When she noticed Fumi had removed the tag and was staring at it in confusion, she squinted suspiciously at the girl, inching closer so to better examine the alleged mononoke that could resist her magic. "Wait a minute, girl. You have an aura like a mononoke, yet you're just a human child."

Fumi ignored the child comment, knowing that no matter how much she protested she would definitely seem like a child to this ancient woman. "I don't know about an aura, but yeah, I'm just a human." She flicked the tag off of her fingers, watching it flutter to the floor with distaste.

The woman jabbed a gnarled finger into Fumika's chest, harshly prodding the watch through the rough fabric of her kosode. "That, girl. Whatever that piece of jewelry is, it's bewitched."

"It's my grandpa's watch." She fished the pocket watch out from under her kosode, letting the old woman examine the antique device. Even with her main guardian trapped in a state of suspended animation, Fumika didn't feel alarmed by the old woman. Perhaps it was her tenacious desire to protect her inn, but she felt she could trust her enough to show her the watch. "I'm aware that it's magic, but I didn't know you could see its aura without having something like it yourself. Or being a yokai."

Was the woman a yokai? She didn't seem like it, but tales of old told of some spirits that could assume human guises.

The woman grasped the watch carefully in her gnarled fingers, running her thumb over the metal vines gripping its face. "Hm, interesting device you have there. I've never seen anything quite like it. I'd keep it hidden, child." She let it fall back against Fumika's chest before turning her attention to Muramasa and Kagero, her expression hardening with sharp dislike. "And who exactly are these two?"

"They're…well…" Fumika searched Muramasa's face for any sort of expression to guide her before remembering that he couldn't move a single muscle. "They're friends."

"I'd be careful with who you call your friends." Her hard gaze was specifically fixed on Muramasa.

"He's not as awful as he looks." Despite her assertion that Muramasa wasn't completely awful, Fumi wasn't certain if he live up to her claims if she dared remove the tag holding him silent and still. It would, however, have to come off his face at some point. Praying he would tame his temper for just a few minutes, Fumi reached up and plucked the tags off his face.

Animation immediately bled back into his body, as did an expression of potent dislike. "You damn hag." Despite the insult, Fumi could see the muscles in his face twitching as he battled against the urge to cuss and yell. She felt mildly proud of him. "We gave you no reason to attack us."

"You're clearly cursed, the stink of it rolls off of you like a miasma." The woman's hard, unblinking stare softened abruptly, much to Fumika's alarm. "But I'll admit, perhaps I was too hasty in passing judgment. I'm afraid we're all a little bit jumpy around here lately."

Fumika glanced up just as she yanked the tag off of Kagero's forehead, the shadow spirit drawing in a loud sigh of relief. "We?"

The woman's face developed a sudden matronly touch, making her look more like someone's loving grandmother rather than a cranky old innkeeper with the uncanny ability to sense ghosts. "It's alright, they're not evil. It's safe to come out."

They came out of everywhere – out from behind the desk, from up the stairs, even from under the cushions, making the sparse room seem like it harbored an infinite amount of clever hiding spaces. The dozens of little yokai came in every shape and size, from a floating roll of cotton with four arms to a tiny child who seemed almost human save for the wintry chill hovering around her. Some were more curious than others, eager to greet the three newcomers, such as the pink fox pup now hovering inches away from Fumika's watch, while others, including a shadow spirit not unlike Kagero, clung close to the walls, fearful that maybe their human protector was wrong about the sinister, powerful yokai and their human companion that suddenly stood before them.

Startled by the proximity of the pink fox and the sudden appearance of a yokai consisting entirely of a mass of brown fur, Fumika took a step backwards towards Muramasa, nearly crashing into him as she tripped on a white cat with eyes too intelligent to be a mere mortal. He uttered a cheerful hello before rubbing himself along her legs, leaving white hairs in the fabric of her kosode. "Um, hi to you guys too," she said as she awkwardly tried to maneuver around without trampling on any of them.

"Low-leveled yokai. No wonder no one is staying at this place, it must a nest of mischief." The yokai that resembled a child in a pastel blue kimono curiously began to touch the tattered remains of Muramasa's hakama, only to have it harshly yanked out of her hand. "But why?" he asked of the old woman, a fat purple bird yokai now perched on her shoulder.

"Someone has to protect them from the evils preying on them in this town," she said, her voice leaving as a weary sigh. "Anyone can protect the humans, but few can protect the yokai."

Fumi knelt down to allow the child yokai to examine her watch, the girl becoming as interested in it as she had been in Muramasa's clothes. "What are you protecting them from?"

"Yes, do tell." Muramasa assumed his floating seat position, his scabbard laid lengthwise across his lap. "It wouldn't, by any chance, be why all the humans seems to be missing from this place would it?"

"Not missing," said the woman, her face hardening. "Hiding."

She launched into her story then, describing in great detail the unfortunate malady that had befallen the town in the form of amorphous yokai monsters that came to terrorize its denizens on the advent of every full moon. They were nothing like she had ever seen, she said, and such was deeply concerning as she was one of the rare few who possessed the innate ability to see spirits from birth. They seemed constructed to her, artificially crafted by some dark maker to do his evil bidding, bidding that involved the destruction and absorption of souls, siphoned from the bodies of the living, the dead, and those even odder yokai who walked the rift in-between. Few were safe unless they possessed the kind of spiritual fortitude to withstand the creatures' onslaught, and the only way thus far to keep the monsters at bay was to stay indoors and cover one's home in a ring of tags. Yokai could not handle the tags themselves, so unless they managed to sneak their way into some unsuspecting human's home before any protective barriers were erected, they were trapped outside as easy food. That was where the innkeeper came in, opening her doors to all unfortunate souls unwilling to leave their once comfortable hamlet on the advent of every moon. Rumors of the town's problem had traveled far and wide, so few came by and even fewer stayed long enough to need her inn. The least she could do was offer protection to those that no one else knew were even around to protect.

"That's awful," Fumi said once the woman finished her narration. The creatures swarming around her reminded her of children.

"What's even worse is that the full moon is two nights away and we still have no place to take shelter." Muramasa folded his body back into a standing position, eyeing the woman with an expectant gaze. "Say, if you're so open to allowing yokai into your little inn then –"

"No," the woman said with firm finality. The bird on her shoulder snickered as Muramasa's expression fell.

"Let me finish speaking!" he barked, sending the giggling bird fluttering into the rafters.

"No need, I know what you're going to ask," said the woman. "And the answer is no. The girl can stay, but you two best be getting out of here before the moon makes its grand showing."

Kagero sputtered in bewilderment. "Why me? I'm not the one who's being rude."

"Doesn't matter." The woman waved a wrinkled, dismissive hand. "You have that same aura about you that he has. I don't trust it."

Fumi couldn't imagine sleeping in this strange world with monsters roaming the streets for a single night without her two yokai companions around. As rude as Muramasa was, he was the strongest among them and she was starting to sense something akin to kindness lurking under his harsh and angry shell that might every so often peek out and greet the world before retreating back into its sinkhole. And despite his ability to slink around unnoticed by his adversaries, Kagero was too cowardly to be strong, she feared the monsters would devour him just as soon as they'd devour her.

Fumika grabbed Kagero's delicate hand in hers and leaned in towards Muramasa."I'm sorry, ma'am, but these are my friends." It strained her to say the words, as much as they were true. Her parents admonished any defiance on her part, and of her actions now they would not approve. "I promise you they can be trusted. I-I'll even prove it to you!"

The woman arched a thin brow in curiosity. "And how would this be done?"

Fumi opened her mouth to offer an answer, but found she could only chew her clumsy words into unintelligible, gibbering stammers. She didn't know how she could prove it because she hadn't actually thought that far. The sentence had spilled out by accident, her mouth moving faster than her train of thought.

"I…" It was worse than blanking during school after the teacher had already called on her. Much, much worse.

"The monsters," Muramasa said, his voice yanking Fumika out of her trance. His face was blank and unreadable, but his tone was as clear and confident as Fumi's was unsure and wavering. "We'll kill them for you."

The woman tilted her head back, looking at him from down her long, crooked nose. "And just how do you suppose you're going to do that?"

"Simple," he said, speaking as though he were discussing something as innocuous as the weather. "Ghostly swords call for ghostly blood, and my sword shall always thirst."

The woman held his gaze, her dark, calculating eyes never blinking. Muramasa never let his close an inch either, and all the while grinned like a cat who'd just caught the fattest of mice. Fumi felt Kagero's nervous hand tighten in her grasp.

"Fine." The innkeeper closed her eyes in defeat. "You may stay. But promise me you will vanquish these evil spirits."

"You have my word," said Muramasa.

Fumika exhaled a ragged sigh of relief. She leaned forward in a gentle bow of gratitude. "Thank you so much ma'am. I hope it's not too much trouble, but do you think we could have baths before we go to bed?"

"I wanna show it to her!" A sudden bout of infighting broke out between the child-like yokai, a throng of them suddenly arguing amongst each other over who would 'show it to her'.

"You may all show miss…" The innkeeper trailed off, eyeing Fumika for assistance regarding her name.

"Fumika," Fumi said.

"Fumika," said the innkeeper, sounding much like an exhausted mother, "the bath. But you, Mera, make sure you go with her and keep it warm."

A lion yokai with flaming crimson fur strode proudly to the front, a proud grin plastered across his feline face. His wild and tangled mane wreathed his face in flickering flames.

"Our baths aren't fed by an onsen," the innkeeper said to Fumika, "so Mera here will use his flames to keep it warm for you. I'm afraid he can't speak, but he's still quite friendly."

Squinting his eyes in feline adoration, the little lion placed a paw into Fumi's hand, his pawpads soft and warm like a kittens.

"He'll show you the way to the ladies bath," continued the innkeeper.

"Hey, what about us?" Muramasa indicated to both himself and Kagero.

"Hm." The innkeeper rolled her eyes towards the ceiling as if her thoughts were materializing above her as clouds that only she could see. Flicking her gaze suddenly forward, she pointed a crooked finger towards Kagero. "You can go use the men's bath house." Her finger slid sidelong towards Muramasa. "You will have to pay."

"What the hell?" Fumi could have sworn the flame centered on his hat grew along with his outburst. "None of us have money! How do you expect me to pay?"

"That's not my problem," she said, turning to ascend the stairwell towards whatever room she called her personal dwelling. "I wouldn't complain too much, I'm practically giving you a room for free. That's more than most yokai of your strength get out of me."

He grumbled a foul word under his breath and began to turn away, stopping only when he spotted a yokai of interest loitering near the stairwell. Fumi could barely make out the newcomers form in the darkness, but amidst the shadows she could see his familiar cat-like eyes and the wide rim of his straw hat. Muramasa reached out a hand and called the yokai forward with the curl of a shadowy finger.

"You there. Come here," he said. "Do you like to gamble?"

The other's eyes widened to gold moons in the darkness. He took a hesitant step out of the shadows, revealing himself to be a creature not unlike Muramasa, a humanoid shadow clad in the clothes of a warrior. His shoulder pads, however, were in the unmistakable shape of playing cards. His eyes bore a distinct sort of lustful gaze.

"Y-Yeah. Yeah I do," said the other yokai, scurrying up to Muramasa and looking at him with an innocent sort of reverence.

"I thought so. You remind me of me when I was your age." To the ignorant Muramsa might have sounded fatherly, but to Fumi he just sounded like a predator.

"I-I do?" The other yokai pointed sheepishly at himself, as if he couldn't believe his elder sibling he'd never know he had until now was acknowledging his existence.

"Yeah you do." Muramasa drew a deck of handafuda cards from somewhere underneath his cloak. "I bet you enjoy playing cards, don't you?"

The other yokai nodded with an idiotic sort of eagerness. "Absolutely, yes I do!"

"Good, good." Muramasa slipped the cards out of their case and began thumbing through them, shuffling them even before the other yokai had agreed to play. "Do you have money to bet? I'm not playing if you don't have anything to offer up. Just how it is, you know?"

"Yes, yes I do, absolutely!" He shoved his hands into his pockets, coming out with handfuls of coins. "I haven't been dead for long, but I made sure I kept my entire fortune with me when I died."

The smiled that played across Muramasa's face was a wicked little thing. "Exactly what I wanted to hear. Come here, let's play some cards."

Fumika almost couldn't look at Muramasa or the other yokai who was blissfully unaware of the fact that he was being played as a fool. She could see where Muramasa was going with this, and she didn't like it, however, she didn't object enough to stop him from conning the other yokai out of his cash. Best to just let fools be fools.

"Let's go, Mera," she said to the lion yokai and his entourage. "We'll leave these two to their…business."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter VI: Bravery

"Help!"

Caught in the foggy limbo between wakefulness and slumber, Fumika thought the voice was but the product of a dream, a lucid phantom drifting through her drowsy mind. She mumbled to herself and rolled over, tugging the sheer, silky covers closer to her body.

"Help! Help me please, somebody!"

Her eyes shot open. That was no dream sound.

"Help!"

That was definitely real.

Fumi sat up and ran to the window, flinging open the shutters. The midnight breeze was warm yet dry, playing with strands of her brown hair. She stared out into the moon-kissed darkness, listening for the voice. Was it another yokai seeking asylum at the inn? That seemed most likely.

She thought to rouse Muramasa, but she realized she did not know the exact location of the room the innkeeper had forced Muramasa and Kagero to stay in. If the voice outside was a yokai who needed help – and she was certain it was – she couldn't be wasting time trying to find her companions. All the other yokai needed was to be let inside, and then it would be safe. Fumi felt confident that she could be quick enough to do that without the swordsman's help.

Fumi bolted out of her room, down the stairs, and out the back entrance, running along the path that traced the perimeter of the inn's small backyard garden until she reached the edge of the woods where she thought she heard the voice. She listened for it, but heard nothing. Even the cicadas were silent.

"Hello?" she called into the darkness. "Are you still there? I'm here to help you."

A flicker of movement to her right. Fumika squinted into the forest, straining to see what moved. Even with the nearly-full moon tossing bright silver light into the night, the shadows clung with a heavy viscosity to the undersides of the trees. She could scarcely see into the dark spaces where she saw the scenery waver.

"Hello?" Again, no one answered.

The person calling for help had gone silent. While she did not want to leave them to the mercy of whatever it was they were seeking help from, Fumi realized, as the gooseflesh traversed her limbs and neck, that she didn't want to encounter it either. Not alone, at least. The air around her felt heavy, pressured with negativity. She turned and found herself setting back down the path towards the inn at a pace far brisker than the one she had assumed on her way towards the woods.

Once only a few feet away from the inn, Fumi's sandal caught on a divot in the path, concealed by a thick shadow bisecting the trail. She was sent sprawling forward, the pebbly ground slicing open her knees.

"Darn it." She gritted her teeth and rubbed at the abrasions, her palms coming away damp with blood.

She bit back tears, struggling not to cry. Humiliation burned in her chest. Cowardly abandoning the mystery yokai made her feel bad enough, and coupled with crying over a handful of cuts made her feel downright ashamed. No one would even be around to comfort her, to tell her that it was okay to save herself, that it was okay to cry. That knowledge draped her in a crushing mantle of homesickness.

The shadows moved, arresting her string of self-deprecating thoughts. They swirled before her, a roiling tornado of inky darkness, bubbling and shifting as they slowly molded themselves into shape. Fumika trembled and whimpered, scuttling backwards on all fours as the thing solidified, transforming into an amorphous nightmare of viscous black slime, its oozing body long and winding like a serpent's. It possessed two violet, glowing eyes seated above a wide maw of needle-like teeth. Within its jaws it clutched the lifeless body of a small blue dog yokai with pointed ears like snowflakes.

Fumi screamed in fear, her eyes widening as her gaze slid down its coiling form and to the broken little body in its mouth. She gauged the distance between herself and the inn, thinking that if she bolted she might be able to make it inside to alert Muramasa.

She kicked off the ground, making for the inn's back entrance, only to have the monster shift its long body to the side, cutting off her point of escape. With a fearful yelp, she veered off to the right, hoping to loop around the front to the main entrance, where she prayed the doors were unlocked. She never managed to find out, for the monster slithered up the side of the inn to drape itself over the doorway before she could even reach it. Then it hissed, grinning madly, and dove towards her, its claws outstretched to receive its human prey.

Fumi did the only thing she could think to do, and that was turn around and dash down the long flight of stone steps descending towards the street, where she intended to hide in an alleyway or beneath a street cart. Gravity propelled her downward and an ever increasing pace, and she found herself taking the stairs two at a time, anything to put herself ahead of the monster. She knew she was trying her luck by skipping steps, and her fears were confirmed when the edge of her over-sized wooden sandal caught itself in a crack in the stone, sending her sprawling forward down a full landing of the abrasive stone.

She smashed her nose on one of the stones, sharp pain shooting through her skull, and the skin on her knees burned like fire, but she didn't have time to sit around and nurse her wounds. The thing was gaining on her, and quickly.

Leaving her sandals behind where they'd fallen, Fumi flew down the last few flights on bare feet and stumbled out into the dusty road. She felt panic settle in, causing her to hesitate as her thoughts churned at breakneck speeds. Everything seemed so open. Which way was safest? Left? Right? She didn't know, but when she turned around to see how close the creature was, it made the decision for her as it leaped in her direction, mouth wide, causing her to dodge and bolt down the road to her left.

The thing chuckled wetly behind her, giving chase, clearly enjoying its game of cat and mouse. Fumi could feel her lungs beginning to burn, her breath coming in labored gasps. She took a sharp turn down a narrow side street, hoping she could find someplace to hide. She didn't know how much longer she could outrun the creature.

Shadows gobbled her up as she moved through the unlit side street, causing her to realize only once it was too late that the only exit to the street was the same way she had come in. An impassible wall rose up before her, barring her escape. A dead end.

A shroud of dread settling over her, Fumika turned around, cowering against the damp stone wall. She was now face to face with the creature, its hungry purple eyes sinister in the darkness. It grinned, its teeth glistening in the wan moonlight that fell down from between the clouds. Fumika's racing heart felt heavy in her chest. With nowhere to run, she stiffened involuntarily, bracing herself for the creature's attack.

Before the monster could strike, a second shadow swirled up beside it, its thin form eddying and wraith-like. Cat's eyes appeared in the darkness, followed by the silver flicker of steel.

A great sideways slash opening along its body, the creature went down hissing and writhing, leaking syrupy black blood all over the road. It roiled and squirmed, seeping into the soil until there was nothing left of it, not even the ghost of a tarry slick.

Brow pinched in a glare, Muramasa glided out of the darkness, half dressed in only his dark blue hakama. Before Fumi could even thank him he hauled her up by the wrist, dragging her along at a pace almost too quick for her to keep up with.

"Ouch, stop, you're hurting me." She could feel a line of warm blood tracing a line downward from her skinned knees.

He released her wrist. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice tight yet genuinely apologetic. They stepped out onto the main road, Muramasa glancing both ways cautiously. Black ooze dribbled off the end of his sword.

"It's okay." Fumi rubbed her wrist, flexing her fingers. "How did you know to come find me?"

"I'm not exactly a heavy sleeper and you're not exactly a quiet screamer." He started up the road, back towards the inn.

"Thanks." Her face grew shamefully hot.

"Don't thank me yet." He kept his eyes forward, staying alert for the things ahead of him. "That was a loiter, a demon yokai's construct. They typically don't come –"

A second loiter burst from an alleyway, slamming into the samurai yokai and sending him crashing into an empty street cart. He sat up wearily, a cut bisecting the skin above his left eye.

"Alone." He winced, rising from where he fell to stand protectively in front of Fumi, his sword held before him. "They typically don't come alone. Stay behind me."

She had no intentions of moving from around him. "I thought the innkeeper said they only attack on a full moon?"

"So she said, and so I believed." He brought his blade upwards to deflect a blow from the monster, its fangs clanging off his blade. "But it seems she was mistaken."

The moon was nearly full, with only a few days left in its waxing state. Perhaps whatever arcane magic that kept such creatures at bay was weakening, allowing them to boil forth into the human world when ordinarily it could not be touched by their malevolent kind. Fumi knew little to nothing of magical affairs, but she wondered if the things were Okure's henchmen. Perhaps they were using their desire to extinguish Muramasa's life as the catalyst for their growing strength. A sound hypothesis, if not for one glaring mystery: why were they attacking her?

When the creature dove at its prey again, Muramasa thrust his sword upward beneath the creature's jaw, its tip piercing all the way through the top of the monster's enormous skull. Fumi watched with relief and revulsion as the oily thing writhed and perished on the length of his sword.

"There," he said, yanking free his blade and flicking away the black gore that clung to its edge. "Taken care of."

Fumi nearly let herself relax, until she saw a quiver of motion above the rooftops facing Muramasa's back. Its purple flame appeared first, then its eyes, and then its glistening fangs as it dove down towards them. Fumi screamed, but her warning came too late. The thing slammed into Muramasa's back. He grimaced and staggered towards Fumi, his sword slipping from his fingers. A spray of blood erupted from his mouth, which was, to Fumi's alarm, curled into a sad grin.

"I'm sorry." The spray became a steady gush as he forced the remorseful words out despite the pain. "You're on your own for a bit, kid."

He vanished into a puff of purple smog, leaving behind only his sword.

Its jaws wet with the samurai's blood, the creature rose up hungrily, triumphantly, and turned its soulless, ravenous gaze towards the girl.

Fumi's mind went blank, all rational thought having been chased from its home by pure, animal terror. She ran, though somehow remembering to grab Muramasa's sword as she passed it. The retrieval of the swords was, however, purely for comfort's sake alone. She had no intentions of using the thing, she had full intentions of hiding until daybreak.

But where was a good hiding place? Even the alleyways were so clean and so open. The only thing she could see that could possibly conceal her from the creature's sight was an empty street cart. It was safer to hide than to try and fight, so Fumi dropped to her knees and scurried beneath the cart, hunkering down against one of its massive wheels. She could see the creature's flickering flame casting a dancing glow upon the faces of the buildings as it turned down the road in pursuit. Clutching the sword to her chest as if it alone could offer protection, she prayed to every god she knew that the creature would overlook her and be gone.

"I wouldn't hide in here, if I were you." She heard the voice more in her head than in her ears.

It took all her willpower to keep from screaming. She closed her eyes and tried to block out the voice. Muramasa was dead. Gone. He'd finally achieved what he wanted, even if perhaps it hadn't come at the exact moment he wanted it to. To her surprise she felt rather sad; she really believed a good person lived beneath all his angry glares and verbal jabs. But there wasn't time now to mourn, just as there wasn't time to let herself go crazy.

"Your shadow," said the voice, its tone growing urgent. "It can still see your shadow. Turn around, damnit!"

She told herself she wasn't going to listen to imagined voices speaking in only her mind, but as the creature neared her hiding place, she found it was impossible to ignore the voice. She turned around. A brilliant blue flame the size of her palm hovered over her shoulder.

"M-Muramasa?" She kept her voice as a hushed whisper. "But you're supposed to be dead."

"Something that weak can't kill me. It can only banish my corporeal form for a while. But that's not important, you need to get out of here!"

"But if I leave, it'll see me." Fumi feared it might hear her first, the monster was so close.

"And if you don't it will still see you. Your shadow extends into the road." The tiny flame dipped beneath the cart. "Follow me. There is an unlocked storage shed at the end of the next alleyway. It's full of junk you can hide in."

Leaving cover meant running again. Fumi was growing tired of running. "Alright. Let's go."

He took off like a comet, and she took off after him.

Halfway down the alley, she stole a glance over her shoulder and saw the loiter trailing in pursuit, its ribbon-like body rippling in the wind. Her legs pumped faster and her heart began to race, the palpitations throbbing up through her neck. She tried to ignore the monster to her back and instead kept her eyes upon the blue flame shepherding her forward.

Muramasa suddenly darted to the left, a blue firefly in the darkness, and Fumi nearly dashed past him, her legs were moving so fast. She followed him and found herself inside a ramshackle shed piled high with junk. Pottery, furniture, gardening tools; if it could be named, it resided somewhere in that hulking, shapeless mound of forgotten objects.

"Over here, quickly." He hovered near an old square table nestled within a mountain of junk. The way the objects were piled around it created a dark alcove perfect for hiding in.

Fumi crawled beneath the table, tucking her knees beneath her chin, her breath coming out in wooshing gasps that she fought to quiet. She managed to tame her breaking after some difficult mental persuasion, but she still could not calm the fluttering thrum of her terrified heart.

"Stay quiet now, it's coming." The flame that was Muramasa took refuge in a deep clay vase, its depth extinguishing his brightness.

From her sanctuary beneath the table, Fumi could see splashes of purple light appear on the walls as the loiter meandered its way into the dark shed. She couldn't see it, but she could tell it was close by for its presence fouled the air like a noxious fog. A wet, rasping sound reached her ears, and she soon realized it was the sound of the monster's breathing. It sounded like it was right above her. Fumi held her breath, fearful that somehow it might hear her over its own grotesque noises.

The creature neither heard her nor saw her; it passed right by, and as the purple light gleaming on the walls began to retreat, Fumi allowed herself a gentle sigh of relief. She crawled out of cover, moving gingerly so as to make no sound, and slowly peeked over the mountain's edge. The creature hovered in the doorway, its back to her, its wide head craning this way and that, as it decided which direction to search in now. She ducked back down and back into the darkness. She'd wait a minute, maybe five, until peering out again. Better wait until sunup than die.

There was a sudden vibration against her left thigh, as if a giant mosquito were trapped in her pocket, followed by a cheerful electronic melody consisting only of ten simple tones.

Oh no, she thought, warm sweat dampening her brow. Her phone? HER PHONE? How could her phone go off, telephones hadn't even been invented yet in this period, let alone cellphones! She had forgotten it remained in her jeans beneath her kosode, but the tiny black rectangle became irrelevant once she realized she was no longer in the modern world. She assumed it would just die in silence once it ran out of battery life. That had seemed to be the logical conclusion, but sadly the logical had proven incorrect.

There came a snarl as the loiter whirled around. A great crash filled the air with noise when the evil yokai dove head-first into the hulking pile of junk, its massive jaws gnashing wood, glass, and metal as it sought purchase on human flesh.

Fumi dashed out from beneath the table and headed for the single shattered window located high on the shed's back wall. She vaulted over a tall stack of wooden crates and caught its sill, tossing Muramasa's sword out into the alleyway before hauling herself up. Fumi crawled face-first through the window, its jagged edges receiving her like the glass fangs of a great, gaping maw. She fell on all fours outside, snatching up the sword and staggering upward before breaking out again into a run.

Muramasa, still trapped in flame-form, materialized over her shoulder in a bright swirl of blue fire. He seemed brighter, his edges flickering angrily.

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?" The voice screamed in her head. "Why are your legs playing music?"

"It's a cellphone." Behind her, she heard a great splintering crack as the monster burst through the shed's rotting wooden frame. "You can use it to call people who live far away." She scrambled up over a pile of garbage blocking her path in the winding alley and lept off it right before the loiter lunged forward to take a bite. "Someone was calling me, I guess."

"Why would you keep such a contraption on your person if it makes so much noise?" The anger in his voice had subsided, replaced with rapidly cooling exasperation.

Fumi splashed through a puddle, the chilly muck splattering all over her legs and kosode. The alley took a curved right, and she followed it. "I didn't think it would work here. How was I supposed to know it had transdimensional service?"

He paused, and then offered a surprisingly satisfied, "Fair enough." Panic, however, abruptly colored his tone. "Fumi, your arm!"

She looked down, the sleeve of her left arm was hanging in silky ribbons, and a wet, red rent ran half the length of her forearm, a river of blood leaking down between her fingers, painting the sword's hilt. Fumi yelped, in both surprise at her injury and at the precarious path her own blood was taking, before switching it into her left hand.

Still she ran, and still the loiter followed. She was almost out of the alley, almost to that bright square of freedom that would lead to the road, where she could perhaps find someplace better to hide. Her phone had stopped buzzing, and she would toss it out of her pocket at the soonest chance given.

A lump of slimy alley refuse slithered between her toes, and the sludge was slippery enough to send her falling forward. The sword went clattering ahead of her, and she crawled forward to grab it. As soon as her fingers closed around the hilt, she froze, a gust of hot, foul breath running its rancid fingers through the tangled strands of her hair. She turned slowly, her body heavy with terror, her eyes growing wider and wider, the eyes of a tiny fawn staring into the jaws of a wolf.

It was upon her, hovering above her with its body poised to strike like a massive, inky cobra. If she tried to bolt, it would strike, and if she stayed where she was, seated in the center of the alley, her fate would remain the same. Fumi's eyes filled with tears, big fat tears born of a fear no young woman should know.

The voice, serene and hushed, with no trace of its owner's former anger, drifted into her head again. "You see the flame on its head, Fumi?"

She nodded, whimpering. The world seemed to be moving in half speed, the monster rising up, its jaws beginning to widen with impossible slowness. Warm sludge dribbled down from its mouth to splatter upon Fumi's cheeks.

"Take the sword, in both hands, mind you, and when I tell you to, thrust it upwards through his skull, right into the flame."

Fumi moved mechanically, her trembling hands groping for the blade, for her eyes couldn't look away from the nightmare that hovered over her. She found the hilt and held it in her lap, its pointed tip wobbling in her trembling hands like an accusing finger.

"Steady now. Breathe," he said, his tone calm, firm. It sent a parade of chills marching down Fumi's back. "And…now."

The world suddenly came alive in motion as two figures lunged forward to meet each other; Fumi with Muramasa's blade in her unsteady hands, and the loiter with hungry murder brightening its glowing eyes. Fumi thrust the ghostly katana upwards, and the creature impaled itself on its descent.

The monster unleashed a high-pitched keening wail, its body thrashing like a dying snake. Black ooze, eerily hot, gushed around Fumi's wrists, dribbling down her arms where it fell to the road once it reached her elbows. She wanted to let go, to get as far away from it and its screeching as she could, but she knew she couldn't leave now. She had to see this through, she had to make sure this monster was dead.

It screamed and writhed, sinking lower onto the length of the blade. When the blue tip finally pierced through its skull and into its fire, the beast stopped, its milky eyes losing their luster. It stiffened once, twice, and then, after one final death throe, went entirely limp. Its gelatinous body, rapidly lost shape as it decayed into lifeless goo. At length, the sludge slipped entirely off the blade, leaving Fumi alone in the alleyway save for the tiny flame hovering over her shoulder like a bird.

"I am…Impressed," Muramasa said.

Fumi, however, barely heard his praise. Her hand plunged into her pocket, pulling out the cellphone. She swiped its glowing screen, its display showing one missed call. She opened her call log, and her mother's cell number was proudly displayed in red. She rammed the redial button with her thumb. She didn't care if she was crying and coated with a mix of filth and mud, she didn't care how far away her home was right now; if she could just hear her parents' voices one more time she'd be okay.

She held the phone to her ear, listening for the dial tone. It dialed and there was a click as if someone on the other end picked up the line. Behind her mask of grime and gore, Fumi's face brightened. Beside her, Muramasa's full form swirled to life out of purple smoke, his body having returned.

"Mom?" Fumi said into the receiver, her voice wavering, walking the precarious line between sorrow and joy. "Mom, are you there?"

Static. Nothing but the crackle of static. Fumi listened, her heart turning to lead, and prayed that perhaps she might hear a voice through the haze. But eventually the line went completely dead, and even the static was gone.

She screamed, the sound an animalistic shriek caught between a sob and a howl of rage, and hurled the phone against the wall of the alley. Cracks spidered along its screen, and it hit the ground face-down, forgotten.

She began sobbing then, the worst kinds of sobs, the ones that were torn upwards from your gut and leapt from your throat with a burning ferocity. The kind of sobs that, once unleashed, were difficult to contain until physical exhaustion at last took over. She howled and screamed, not caring who heard her, or who she woke up. Bile churned in her stomach, and came rushing up between sobs, splattering onto the dirt road and adding to the ghastly paint job coating her ruined kosode.

She cried harder, and harder with each sob. She cried even when someone smelling faintly of sandalwood and pine held her close, pressing her face into his warm cloak. She cried harder still when calloused fingers stroked the back of her head, entwining themselves within her snarled hair. The physical closeness reminded her of everything at home that was now lost.

"You were very brave." He said, his words a gentle whisper that sought to comfort, yet couldn't.

"I don't care," she screamed between violent, wracking sobs. "I want my momma. I want to go home!"

"I'm sorry." His somber voice was laden with apology. "I don't have the power to do that, yet."

Still crying, her face now hot and sore, Fumi felt herself being lifted up from the ground and cradled in Muramasa's arms like an oversized child. She didn't protest, her body ached with exhaustion and she knew her weary bones could never carry her back to the inn on their own. Miserable, she turned her face into Muramasa's shoulder and cried all the way back to the inn.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter VII: Blade**

She woke to the sound of songbirds calling cheerfully outside her window. Morning sunlight streamed through the glass in gold beams, tickling the floating dust motes with shimmering light. Fumi exhaled shakily and sat up, her hand instinctively reaching to touch the coarse wrappings of gauze that extended from elbow to wrist.

The last thing she remembered from last night was the pain.

"It's too deep to simply bandage," Muramasa said after Fumi had scrubbed herself of the blood and grime. "It's going to need stitches."

The cut she'd received from the broken window ran long and deep. Fumi knew little of medicine, but even she could tell his observation was correct. Reluctantly, she agreed to have him sew it up.

She remembered watching him pass the tip of the needle through a candle's flame. Sterilizing it, he told her. And when he said the word sterile, it reminded her of the anesthesia she wouldn't be receiving.

Muramasa must have seen the horrified look in her eyes, for he glanced up and said, in a soft voice filled with earnest sympathy, "I'm sorry. This will be greatly painful. Try to be strong."

Then the warm needle dipped into flesh. The stabbing pain ripped cries from her throat and tears from her eyes, and the fact that she couldn't struggle – lest her impromptu doctor botch the job – made the pain all that more difficult to bear. All she could do was grip the bed sheets with her free hand and sob while praying he would work faster. She just wanted it to be over, why wouldn't he just hurry, god dammit! The six inch gash was so long and the burning bite of the needle so intense; Muramasa's elegant fingers seemed to be moving so sluggishly...

After that, she must have blacked out, because she could neither recall him finishing the stitches nor anyone tucking her into bed. Yet when she woke she was nestled beneath the covers with a perfectly bandaged arm.

"Prrrrt!" The white cat she had seen on her first day in town sat curled up at the foot of her bed. It stretched languidly before yawning and regarding her with a friendly slow-blink of its eyes. "Good morning, Miss Fumi."

Oh god, she forgot the cat could talk. "Uh, good morning."

The cat jumped off the bed and brushed its body against her legs, its sinuous tail coiling up towards her knees. "I was instructed to watch over you until you woke up. I have a message to deliver." The cat reached up towards a small ribbon attached to its neck and batted at a tiny scroll tucked underneath it. "Would you mind taking it off? It's dreadfully itchy."

Fumi reached down to untie the ribbon.

The cat gave a hearty purr of thanks and scratched its neck with its back leg. Then, wordlessly, it turned towards the door and trotted out of the room, leaving Fumi alone with her note.

She unrolled the delicate piece of rice paper and found, in calligraphy so elaborate and looping that she struggled to read it, a short message:

" _Please make sure to change the bandages on your arm before going downstairs. You will find a clean roll of gauze on the nightstand to your left."_

She cringed when she noticed that not only was there a roll of fresh gauze, but the shattered remains of her cellphone. With a sharp clarity the memories of last night's escapades came flooding back, along with a wave of homesickness. She grabbed the phone and held it in her hand, feeling its weight, trying to count the myriad silvery cracks splitting white and harsh across the black screen. Out of curiosity, she pressed the phone's on button, and found herself unsurprised when the device remained dormant.

With a heavy sigh, she tossed the broken phone aside and began to unravel her bandages. Staring at the ugly, puckered gash and its ladder of black stitches made her feel queasy even on her empty stomach, so she made haste in applying new bandages before heading downstairs.

When she reached the bottom step, she was greeted by a vacant lobby.

"Where the heck did they go?" she said to herself.

"Outside." It was the cat again, who appeared beside Fumi and practically startled her out of her skin. "They're all doing...something to the side of the building." The cat padded over to a pillow by the window and circled the cushion before nestling down on top of it. "I'd help them but, I'd rather sleep."

Fumi couldn't really blame the cat. After last night, she certainly wished she could simply crawl back into bed too. Crawl back into bed, and wake up back in Sakura New Town. Wasn't going to happen, though. This was it, and this was reality. She might as well make the best of it.

Leaving the cat to its slumber, Fumi slid open the front door to the inn, the sunlight nearly blinding her. She shielded her eyes against the glare and stepped out onto the walkway.

"For ten minutes, would you _please_ shut up. Your voice makes my head throb!"

"Good! That's what you deserve because you're ugly and you smell!"

"If you weren't a mere _child_ , I'd cut you down on the spot."

"I'd like to see you try!"

Two voices bickering from around the corner of the inn, just out of sight. One voice was highly familiar. The other was not. It was also strangely prepubescent.

With caution, Fumi peeked around the side. There hovered Muramasa in only his hat and hakama. The sunlight called to attention every raised scar and cut crisscrossing his dark, bare chest. In one hand he held a paintbrush, its end dripping with ink, and in the other a blank talisman. His gaze, however, was not fixated upon his task, but rather, on a small child-like being seated upon the top of a storage barrel.

The small yokai, scarcely more than two feet tall, was clad in full armor and held a miniature sword in his right hand. He had skin the color of rust and ruddy round cheeks. His eyes were pinched shut from laughter as he joyously watched Muramasa seethe. If not for his pointed ears and the small, yellow horns peeking out through the voluminous mane of brown hair cresting his head, Fumi might have thought he was human.

There were several other yokai around, also painting characters onto talismans, but most of them seemed to have halted in their duties to watch the spat between the samurai and the child. None of them noticed Fumi.

"What the heck is going on?" she said, drawing the attention of several yokai, including Muramasa.

"Ah, she finally awakens." Muramasa struggled to compose himself, though Fumi could easily see he was still fuming beneath his hastily applied facade. Behind him, the child blew a raspberry. "How is your arm?"

"It's fine," she said, brushing her fingers along the gauze. She winced when the gentle touch hit just the right spot. "Okay, maybe it's a little sore."

"I'm not surprised. It was quite deep, and you passed out while I was stitching it." He glided over and lifted her arm, closely examining the bandages to make sure nothing had bled through. "Keep an eye on it. We don't want it to get infected."

She looked away, finding it strange to see him act so caring. It was difficult to look him in the eye. Her face felt warm, and she told herself it was just the heat. "T-Thank—"

"Wait a minute, you're Fumi?" The rambunctious child leaped off the barrel and scurried towards Fumi. He stopped right at her feet and stared up at her through dark, narrow eyes. "You're so pretty! Why is someone like you hanging out with someone ugly like him?" The child pointed towards Muramasa.

Muramasa whirled around, his cool exterior melting as he fumed from within. "Ugly?" His golden eyes flared and he clenched his jaw. "How dare you!"

Fumi couldn't contain a giggle. Was Muramasa really getting riled up over a child?

"Yes," she said, still laughing and avoiding Muramasa's venomous gaze. "I'm Fumi. And you really shouldn't say things like that to Mura. He's a, uh, friend of sorts."

"I'm Oko," said the child, eagerly extending his hand for her to shake. "Your friend is really gross, though. Why should I stop telling him he's nasty if it's the truth?"

"That's it, I have had it with you!" Muramasa's fingers clenched so hard on the handle of his paintbrush that it snapped into splinters. He retrieved a fresh one from the pot of ink and, with forceful rigidness, roughly shoved it and a blank talisman into Oko's chubby hands. He leaned in close to Oko's face, his brow wrinkled in a threatening glare. "Shut up, and get to work. This needs to be done before tonight, do you understand?"

Oko stuck out his tongue and blew another raspberry, showering Muramasa's face in spittle.

Muramasa recoiled with a groan of disgust, and Fumi took the initiative to move in between the two yokai.

"Guys, how about we not start a fight first thing in the morning?" She tried to put on her best diplomatic smile.

Muramasa's eyes widened in astonishment, and he sputtered nonsensically before finding his words. "But, he started–!"

"How old are you again?" She smirked impishly at him. Fumi couldn't believe he was pulling such a juvenile routine.

Muramasa grimaced and averted his eyes.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Fumi turned then to Oko, crouching down so that she was at his height. "Now, Oko, sometimes even if you think something about someone, you shouldn't necessarily say it. Especially if it's an insult. It's rude."

Staring at Muramasa, Oko narrowed his eyes to slits and pouted. "Alright, fine!" he said with a childish sigh of defeat. "I'll stop calling him stinky. For now."

Oko stomped back towards the barrel. He sat down at its base with a huff and began painting on his piece of paper. It quickly became evident that he couldn't read, for he could produce nothing but messy, black scribbles.

Fumi sidled over to Muramasa. "And you. Can I speak to you for a moment? Preferably away from your, uh," she looked at the array of other yokai, some having returned to their duties, others still regarding her with bright-eyed curiosity, "friends?"

Muramasa massaged his temples, his eyes pinched shut against a headache. "Yeah, sure. Lead the way"

She led him out to the front of the inn and onto the small veranda where they could be alone.

Muramasa sighed, his stiff posture and squared shoulders visibly relaxing. "Thank the gods you gave me a reason to get out of there. Thought I was going to kill that kid if he kept it up any longer."

Fumi crossed her arms and tapped her foot, her expression one of amusement. "You let a kid like that get the best of you?"

Muramasa removed his hat and scratched the back of his head, his eyes shamefully averted from Fumi's. "Look, everyone has things that set them off."

At that Fumi laughed. To think Muramasa's was juvenile insults, of all things! She had stopped taking insults like Oko's as a true personal affront in the 5th grade.

"Anyway," Muramasa said, replacing his hat, "what is it you wanted to ask?"

"Just what is going on back there?" she exclaimed, motioning back towards the inn where the yokai were gathered.

"That? It was the innkeeper's idea." He sat down on the inn's front steps. Fumi took a seat next to him. "You know that tomorrow is the full moon, yes?"

Fumi's body stiffened. Her injured arm itched. "I knew it was soon, but I didn't know it was tomorrow."

"Well, it is. She's having us string up the talismans for protection. Just in case anything happens."

"Like last night?" She rubbed the gauze.

"Yes, like last night," he said. "That's not an incident I care to repeat."

"Likewise. By the way," she said, "thanks for saving me."

"It's fine," he said, quiet and solemn. "I told you, I refuse to stain my hands with your blood."

Fumi wondered if perhaps there was more to it, but she kept silent and allowed a lengthy pause to fall between them. The only sounds that filled the air were the morning songbirds and the gentle summer breeze. Fumi watched the clouds above, slowly crawling across the sky while Muramasa stared down at his scarred hands in thought. They sat together like that for a while, enjoying the peaceful quiet.

Muramasa broke the silence with a weary sigh. "I guess I should get back to work." He rose from his seat. "They'll never get it done without someone to give them some direction."

"Would you like me to help?" Fumi stood and brushed the dirt from her clothing.

"Yes, but not with the tags." He nodded towards her arm. "I need you to go into town to get supplies for your wound. That, and to buy a sword."

Fumi arched a quizzical brow. "A sword?"

"You're going to have a little bit of self-defense class this afternoon." He began to float back towards the group of yokai. "Nothing too complex, just enough to help you defend yourself in case anything like last night's incident ever occurs again."

A chill scampered down Fumi's back. She knew for certain something like that would happen again. If not tonight, then later on her journeys with the samurai. She couldn't count on Muramasa to always protect her. Truth be told, she didn't want him too. Fumi liked her independence, and she couldn't have that if she remained forever chained to his heels.

Muramasa handed Fumi a coin purse that had been tied around his waist. "That should be enough to get you a sword and some medical supplies. There is a yokai named Shobushi here at the inn who knows a fair deal about the blade. I'll send him along to help you pick out one that is proper."

"Do you want me to take Oko along, too?" She hefted the pouch idly in her hand. "He seems to like me and it would get him out of your hair for a bit."

Muramasa laughed, a rare sound of genuine amusement. "Please feel free. I will forever be in your debt."

xxx

Fumi recognized Shobushi as the fellow Muramasa conned out of his money on their first night at the inn. She felt immensely guilty over the fact that the money she planned to use had originally been his (and had been transferred to her possession by less than honest means) but Shobushi – ever idealistic – informed her not to worry about its origins, stating that he was honored to have lost it to a fundafa player as talented as Muramasa. Fumi failed to follow his logic, but she saw no use in arguing with him any further as it seemed he could not be dissuaded.

He did, however, prove to know quite a great deal about the blade. He struck her as airheaded and overly optimistic about money and his endeavors of success ("I shall one day make a fortune with my luck," he had said on the way towards the town's shopping district), but about the blade, his knowledge was sharp and deadly serious. Upon reaching the smith, he did wonders whispering in Fumi's ear, helping her carefully select a blade that was the perfect length and weight for someone her size.

Oko, alarmingly enough, seemed to take a liking to Shobushi, despite the samurai yokai's deep admiration for Muramasa, and behaved as well as a child could. He seemed perpetually in awe at the swords hanging on the smith's walls or displayed behind glass, his narrow eyes particularly fixed upon one blade of bright silver that he stated reminded him of a sword once wielded by his father.

By the time they finally returned to the inn, the sun was beginning to set, coloring the sky with long splashes of yellow and peach.

Fumi walked up to the front steps of the inn and, before entering the building, bowed deeply to Shobushi. "Thank you," she said, feeling the weight of the sword now secured around her waist. "You were a huge help today." Fumi reached into her kosode and pulled out a small satchel of coins, which she held out to Shobushi. "I want you to have these. My treat."

Shobushi shook his head, holding up his shadowy hands when she tried to step closer. "I can't! Muramasa won them in all fairness, I can't accept this kind of charity."

Fumi snorted with laughter and forcefully shoved the satchel towards Shobushi's chest. "You don't know Muramasa like I do. He probably had cards hidden in his sleeves."

Beside her, Oko stomped his tiny feet, kicking up small plumes of dirt. "I bet he did! He's stinky, and only a stinky man would do something like that."

"Look," Fumi said, meeting Shobushi's shy gaze, "I know you don't want to accept money from Muramasa, but he gave me this money, so technically it's mine. And as the owner of this money, I'm giving it to you." She smirked. "And, besides, how can you gamble your way to wealth if you have nothing to bet with?"

He considered this for a moment, his fingers hovering uncertainly over the bag. At length, they curled around the heavy sack, which made its way into his pocket. A bright smile just barely peeked over the high collar of his robes.

"T-Thank you!" He bowed back, his wide straw hat toppling awkwardly off his head.

Laughing, Fumi stooped down to retrieve it. "It's no problem," she said, brushing off the dust and handing it back to the now blushing samurai. "You deserve it. I know Muramasa is going to be happy with the blade you picked out."

At the mention of Muramasa's name, Shobushi's eyes sparkled with glee. "Oh, I hope he does!"

Oko looked sidelong and made a disapproving, flatulent sound with his tongue.

"I'll see you guys later," Fumi said with a wave. "And again, thank you so much, Shobushi."

She paused long enough to witness him wave back before she turned and stepped into the lobby.

xxx

"Hm." Muramasa hefted the blade, his hands lightly grasping the hilt, testing its weight and balance. "He did you well." He handed the sword back to Fumi, who returned it to the scabbard tied to her waist. "It's a well-made weapon and should serve its purpose just fine."

He and Fumi sat on the veranda together, watching the sun make the last of its journey beneath the darkening horizon. Fumi smiled inwardly at his words as she imagined how excited Shobushi would be upon hearing of Muramasa's approval. She couldn't wait to tell him.

"However," continued Muramasa, "a fine weapon can only get one so far. Even a poor blade can be deadly in the hands of a master, and a fine one benign in the hands of an amateur."

"I guess it's time for you to train me, then?" She rubbed her arm where the remnants of a few mosquito bites still lingered.

Fumi hadn't been looking forward to this hour. There was no way she could ever become skillful at swordplay in merely a day, and the thought of Muramasa's reactions to her fumbling attempts caused the contents of her stomach to congeal into an icy stone.

"Indeed, it does," Muramasa said with a slight nod. He rose from his seat. "Come. We will go into the woods where there are no distractions."

"Alright." Fumi stood with an audible and nervous sigh before trailing after him.

She followed him in silence as his wraith-like form drifted effortlessly though the woods. Fumi had a bit more trouble traversing the land; brambles snagged at her kosode, and she stumbled more than once over protruding roots and treacherous rocks in the gloomy darkness. Each time Muramasa said nothing; he simply stopped moving and occasionally looked over his shoulder expectantly as he waited for her to catch up.

It became apparent early on in their journey that he sought something specific out here in the woods, with how his bright gaze looked out into the shadows of the trees with a hard intensity. Fumi wondered what he was looking for.

At last, they stepped into a clearing with hard, flat ground overgrown with tiny, blue wildflowers. Here the canopy of the forest opened up, revealing a ceiling of stars. The moon stared down at them like a giant, pale eye, tossing silver light into the clearing and causing indigo shadows to seek refuge along the edges of the forest. It was here where Muramasa finally stopped.

"Perfect," he said, surveying the wide clearing. "This is where we shall start your training." He flicked a hand towards the sword at Fumi's side. "Take it out. First we shall work on your stance and balance."

With a hiss of steel, the sword came free from its scabbard. Nervous, her heart fluttering slightly, Fumi held it out in front of her with one hand. She had never paid much attention to swords or kendo growing up, and samurai stories seldom interested her, so she truly felt clueless standing there in the dark with her new blade in hand.

Immediately, Muramasa began to chuckle, though his tone lacked any patronizing edge. Instead, he sounded truly bemused.

"Well, first you're going to need to hold it with two hands." His touch light and gentle, he grabbed her free hand and brought it up to join the other around the grip of the sword.

"I'm sorry!" Fumi stammered, her knuckles paling around the grip.

"It's fine," he said. "This is just practice." His hands came to rest on her shoulders, exerting upon them a light pressure. "Now, relax. Your shoulders can't be stiff for this. There you go, that's better."

Fumi relaxed beneath the touch and found herself puzzled by the tone of his voice. So calm, so patient. She felt she could even faintly detect notes of approval. Was this really the same Muramasa she knew? The awful, cruel teacher described by Kagero?

There came a silvery whisper as Muramasa withdrew the Juuchi Yosamu and stood by her side, holding it before himself in a battle-ready stance, an image of perfection against Fumi's awkward imitation.

"Hold it out like this," he instructed, "and find your center of gravity. Feel it in the ground, right between your feet."

Fumi tried to feel it and, after a moment of awkward shifting and shuffling, she felt that perhaps she was gaining a sense of balance. Still, she knew her arms were stiff, a tight knot could be felt forming between her shoulder blades. Fumi had much work to do on her stance, but she felt less afraid. Muramasa was not such a cruel teacher.

"You're getting there." Muramasa hovered around her in a circle, observing her posture from all sides. "Move your left foot back just a bit and relax your shoulders again. Then we will move on to the next thing."

"Next thing?" Fumi said after correcting her posture, trying her best to loosen up her shoulders.

"Yes, the next thing." He crossed his arms and nodded sagely. "Proper posture won't protect you alone. You must learn to attack and to guard."

"Ah." Fumi combed her fingers through her tangled brown hair, feeling foolish. "Makes sense."

With the cyan tip of the Juuchi Yosamu, Muramasa pointed to an empty point in space. "Pretend there is an enemy there. I want you to slice him, first left, then right, and end it with a thrust."

"Alright," Fumi said, reading the sword and balancing on her feet. This wasn't so bad. She was starting to even have a little fun. "Sounds easy enough."

A mischievous chuckle rumbled low in the back of Muramasa's throat. "Yes, but you must keep your stance and maintain your center of gravity while in motion."

Oh. Silly her to have assumed it would be so easy.

"No, go," he said. "Try to feel it. Flow into your motions. Move with your blade, not against it."

Fumi did not quite understand what he meant by that, but she resolved to try her best, as always.

Her first attempt she knew was awkward, stumbling, the act of staying in stance while remaining in motion proved to be far more cumbersome that she expected. Muramasa watched in silence, his bright eyes calculating, the pupils frequently growing and shrinking as he observed his student's efforts.

When Fumi had completed her first cycle of attacks against the invisible adversary, the yokai simply said, "Again."

And so she did it again, dicing up invisible loiters with an equally as awkward series of swings and thrusts. She stumbled over her own feet, feeling as thought her shoes had somehow grown three sizes larger over the course of the hour.

"Again."

The woosh of a blade slicing through thick summer air. The dampness of sweat as it began to bead against her brow. Sticky hair adhering to her forehead, threads of it getting in her eyes and making them itch. Moisture gathered uncomfortably beneath her armpits, and slicked the palms of her hands.

"Again."

A burning pain in her biceps, thighs that ached to take a seat. Sore arms and sore legs, muscles being pulled taut to their limits.

"Again."

And yet, sore as they were, Fumi felt a change in her motions each time her teacher called "Again". She could feel that center of gravity, rock solid beneath her, and the knot between her shoulders had loosened its coils despite the new pains forming in her arms and legs. Fumi could move and step, thrust and swing, and her body, acclimated through the hours of repetition, could follow through with a grace she didn't know she possessed.

She completed yet another cycle of exercises and readied herself for Muramasa's single-word command, and instead was met with the sound of subdued applause.

"Well done," Muramasa said. "I'm pleased with your progress. You are a swift learner."

Fumi flashed a wide grin and shook beads of sweat from her sodden bangs. "I might not be the greatest, but I will always try my best.

The moon was higher in the sky now, and fireflies had come out of hiding to dance around them in the purple shadows of the night.

"That's a good quality to have. Don't lose it." He looked her up and down, his expression softening as he examined her sweat-streaked hair and heavy breathing. "I have one more important thing to teach you. However, if you'd like you may rest a bit first."

"No," Fumi said. "I want to finish what we started. We can rest when we're all done."

He hesitated a moment, his jaw clenched and his narrow pupils regarding her uncertainly. "Alright. I'll teach you how to guard." He lifted the Juuchi Yosamu into position. "When I swing my sword towards you, I want you to block it with your own. Simple enough?"

Fumi swallowed hard and nodded. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of her neck. Everything about Muramasa and the Juuchi Yosamu was intimidating, and she felt wary about having that thing swinging down towards her.

"Ah, o-okay!" Sword gripped in sweaty palms, she held her weapon at the ready.

"Are you certain?" Muramasa arched a brow. "You seem hesitant. There is no shame in ending the session early tonight, if you are too tired."

"No, I can do it. I'm fine, honestly," she said, not-so-honestly. Her limbs felt like sacks filled with sand and her eyelids like sheets of lead. Now that she had momentarily halted her exercises, the exhaustion had caught up to her and all she yearned for was food, a bath, and sleep. But she had never been a quitter, and quitting now, just before the very end of his lesson, somehow seemed sacrilegious.

"If you are certain." He lowered his blade just a hair. "I'm not here to push you."

"I am certain." Fumi could feel herself growing annoyed with him. She imagined her parents – far off in another time, in another place – and how they believed she should be pushed. They would be so ashamed if she quit now.

"Alright," he said, giving in to her tenacity. "Be on guard."

Her hands tightened around the blade's grip.

"HAA!" In a flash of teal metal and purple robes, he swung the blade down towards her.

A loud clang echoed through the woods and her vision erupted into a white-hot image of pain as agony rippled up her left arm. Muramasa hit her blade at an odd angle, sending it flying from her grasp to sail end over end until it landed unceremoniously amidst the waist-high blanket of wildflowers. Fumi's free hand immediately latched on to its suffering counterpart as she sunk to her knees, fighting tears and moaning in pain.

"Oh, gods, Fumi!" He was abruptly by her side, kneeling down in the tall grass with her, reaching for her damaged wrist. "Let me see."

"Ow." She let him take her hand, and winced when one of his spindly fingers pressed itself against her wrist. "Why'd you have to come at me so _hard_?"

"I didn't mean to. It's been a while since I've trained with anyone. I miss teaching. In the heat of the moment, I got carried away." He averted his gaze, embarrassed. "Can you move it at all?"

Fumi grimaced, but managed to move her sore wrist in a full circle. "Yeah, it hurts a little, but I think I'm okay."

"Just a sprang," he said as his fingers moved lower to unravel the gauze that hid the row of stitches trailing down her arm. "And I completely forgot about these. I should have been more careful. I shouldn't have pushed you."

She felt a tightness in her chest, finding his kindness bizarre yet comforting. "It's okay. You didn't push me. I did."

"Yes, but," he let go of her arm and rose to his full height, "I had the choice to indulge you in your foolishness, which is something I shouldn't have done."

Fumi moved to retrieve her sword. "We were both acting like idiots, then." As she stood, blade in hand, she tossed him a wide smile.

His brow pinched angrily and he opened his mouth to retort, but his expression abruptly softened and the retort came out only as a quiet laugh. "Yes. I guess we were." Muramasa looked up at the sky towards the high moon and its entourage of stars. "It's quite late now." He sliced a tiny cut on his hand, sating the Juuchi Yosamu's thirst so it could once again sleep. "I think we should be getting back soon."

"Class, dismissed!" Fumi sheathed her sword and bounded after him as he drifted off into the woods.

Xxx

They adopted a far more leisurely pace on the way back. Fumi was grateful for that, for her wrist still stung and her legs had practically turned to liquid. She knew she wouldn't be able to match the pace Muramasa had set last time. He seemed acutely aware of this and stayed by her side, making sure she avoided any pitfalls hiding on the forest floor.

It still felt strange to her, to see him act so kind and so friendly. And just as they were at the edge of the woods, with the cleared fields and buildings of the town peeking through the thinning trees, Fumi remembered something Muramasa had said. Something that intrigued and fascinated her.

"Muramasa?"

He acknowledged her with the tilt of his head and a noncommittal grunt.

"Did you…say you _liked_ teaching while we were out in the woods?" She tried to keep her tone serious, but after his display of friendliness during their training, she couldn't entirely mask her air of amusement.

"I…" His eyes widened as he sought for an adequate answer. "I did. I had a few apprentices whom I trained while I was alive."

"That much I gathered, but, I thought you said you hated Kagero?" She put her hands on her hips and smirked at him. Perhaps she'd been right before. Perhaps there was a softer man beneath the hard shell.

He sighed and his whole body seemed to droop. "I don't hate Kagero. Back then I had been the only person even willing to train him, he was so foolish and clumsy. I grew to care about him, and he grew to learn, however slowly."

"Why'd you stop?"

Muramasa barked a short, harsh burst of laughter. "I died!"

Fumi cringed, her shame coloring her face red. "Oops. I should have known."

"And the only reason I acted so harsh towards him when we first met was because I was angry." The two began walking across the fields, now nearing the inn with its golden, illuminated windows. "I was hurt that he had given up everything I taught him to learn a different form of martial arts."

"Ninjutsu?"

"Indeed. I am over my anger now," he said as they reached the front of the inn. "I feel it suits him."

"I'm glad." The ghost of a smile just barely touched her lips.

They reached the entrance of the inn. Muramasa floated up onto the veranda and slid open the door for her. "Well, it is time for bed. Tomorrow is the night of the full moon and we must remain vigilant. Get some rest."

"You too," she said, heading towards the stairs. Halfway up the flight, she turned around to tell him goodnight, but he had already vanished.


End file.
